A hazard of new fortunes

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A HAZARD
OF NEW FORTUNES

BY WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS

INTRODUCTION BY ALEXANDER HARVEY

TWO VOLUMES IN ONE

1ODER»

xppc

@

BONI AND LIVERIGHT, INC.

PUBLISHERS .' .

.' . NEW YORK

Printed in the

United States of America

COPYRIGHT, 1889, BY
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS

Three significant facts challenge our attention at the
outset in considering the work of William Dean Howells as
an author. In the first place he is a literary artist — perhaps
one of the very greatest of literary artists. In the next place
he is the champion of realism against romanticism. Finally
he had no college education. He is a self-taught man.

In characterizing Howells as a literary artist we meai
that his work has beauty, precisely as the sculpture of the
Greeks has beauty. There is in his writing the "thrill"
derivable from contemplation of, say, a statue by Praxiteles,
or a beautiful woman. All of us are not sufficiently sophis-
ticated to account for the nature of this pleasure in reading
Howells. It is a secret of style and that secret has baffled
generations of great critics. Shakespeare had this secret,
and so had Virgil and Milton. The English language is a
more exquisite instrument because of the beauty of the man-
ner of Howells when he tells his story. This explains the
difficulty of indicating the greatest work of the author of
"A Hazard of New Fortunes." Every one of his novels has
this inexplicable charm of style. Nor must it be supposed
that it is a charm appreciable only by the initiated. A
stylist of true power can charm even the casual reader with
his manner. It is the spell of beauty. Who can say wh;
there is in the spell of a woman's beauty, or in the spell of
a beauty exemplified in the work of Corot? There are
artists who can introduce this effect of beauty into what-
ever they achieve, be they poets, painters, sculptors, archi-

2041731

x INTRODUCTION

tects or musicians. Howells is in that great company. The
proof is afforded by stories like "A Modern Instance," one
of the most beautifully constructed novels in the English
language. Beauty is not necessarily power in the sense that
Balzac has power. Balzac is at times strangely deficient in
beauty from the artistic standpoint. Compare his "Eugenie
Grandet" with "The Rise of Silas Lapham." In this tale
of the Boston merchant Howells has woven an exquisite
tapestry of words and phrases.

The realism for which Howells stands involves a rather
more complex literary idea than that of mere beauty. Real-
ism as a term in literary criticism is difficult to define in a
phrase that will pass muster with its friends. Speaking
generally, Howells stands for a reflection of what to him is
life. There must be a strict fidelity to facts of human ex-
perience. The reader must be vividly impressed with the
idea that the people of whom he reads in a novel are like
himself, people who say and do what he would or say in the
same circumstances, or, if not, that they are people of a
kind he has met, even if they be different from himself. This:
conception of the functions of the novelist implies an amaz-
ing capacity for observation of life, for the analysis of char-
acter. The "plot" of the story must exclude the element
of the purely imaginative, the fantastic, the wildly ex-
travagant in the "romantic" or unreal definition of those
terms. Life must not be spun out of the writer's head but
studied at first hand. The young person reading -Howells
is, therefore, never misled into a view of life based upon
dream elements. His head is never filled with "nonsense."
The young girl is not set to a task of reverie, with a fairy
prince in the background ready to save her from terrible
adventures with heavy villains.

It might be thought that Howells has given himself a hard
task. He takes the daily lives of American men and women,
some of them in Europe, and without varying a jot from
the actualities of their experience he proceeds about the busi-

INTRODUCTION xi

ness of telling a story. The result is intensely exciting.
This is the miracle of the Howells' method. It is very dif-
ficult to convey to an "outsider" the nature of the excite-
ment afforded by reading Howells. A summary of his most
tremendous "plot" is like a record of a commonplace summer
in a conventional atmosphere. We listen to the talk of
people we have all met, saying the things we have all heard.
There is no marked eccentricity of character delineation in
the Dickens manner — no Wilkins Micawbers come up out
of the void, no great "Mel" of the Meredithian order stuns
us. The young ladies are very young sometimes and very
ladylike in Howells. Their names are the names we all
know. Howells enters more closely into the details of
everyday life than most novelists care to do. The furnish-
ings of a room, the appearance of a hotel dining palace, the
swish of a dress — these things concern him tremendously.
The physical aspect of a young man or of an old one will
concern him also.

Why do we revel in these commonplaces? One expla-
,^ nation is undoubtedly the quality of the Howells' humor.
He is one of the most exquisite humorists in the language —
so exquisite, indeed, that it is difficult to see how he could
be happily translated into any other language than his own.
There is no "horseplay" in the Howells' humor, no display
of qualities associated with the American name in this field.
It would be unfair to compare it with that of Jane Austen,
although Howells has all her delicacy, all her subtlety. He
has more action. The humor is not merely in the "slyness"
of the manner. Howells has a different attitude to life. The
humor of Jane Austen is feminine and Anglo-Saxon whereas
that of Howells is steeped in flavors that are Gallic. There
is something paradoxically French in the humor of Howells,
a quality almost Celtic in its gusto. Nevertheless, it is a
humor of the kind which most critics agree to call "quiet."
Still, he can be uproarious in his effect upon the reader.
This feature of his work emerges most conspicuously in his

xii INTRODUCTION

dialogue. It has wit without extravagance of the forced
note, reality without dullness. It grows out of the situation
in which the characters find themselves. It is saturated with
the gloriously high spirits of youth, its freshness, its readi-
ness to see the bright light through whatever gloom.

The life story of Howells is very significant in the light
of the fact that his educational opportunities in the insti-
tutional meaning of the term were so few. He was born in
Ohio in a very small town as long ago as 1837. His father
was a printer in the professional sense of the word, that is
to say a man of unusual education and of wide culture, who
combined the functions of publisher and editor in the con-
duct of a paper that had won for itself local influence and
political importance. Howells learned to set type when he
was a mere boy. A genius so striking as his was sure to
illustrate the well-worn truth that nothing really worth learn-
ing can ever be taught. There is something ridiculous in the
notion that anyone could have "taught" William Dean How-
ells to "write." His entry upon the formal literary career
was preceded by a period of activity in his father's establish-
ment as typesetter and proofreader and then as reporter in
the legislature for a newspaper in Columbus. He had sent
his first contributions to The Atlantic Monthly before the
outbreak of our Civil War. They were poems as well as
essays. For writing the "campaign" life of Lincoln he was
made consul at Venice.

There never was a time when Howells did not study liter-
ature— that of continental Europe as well as that of the
Anglo-Saxon world. His facility in the acquisition of Euro-
pean tongues was a matter of course in one with his sense
of words. He seems to have paid more attention to Italian
literature than to that of the French, but here a general
remark is dangerous. No writer gets the French spirit so
completely in all that relates to literature on its artistic
side. "My Literary Passions" is the most arresting revela-
tion of the unfolding of a writer's mind. He is Puritanical

INTRODUCTION xiii

as well as realistic here. Those tendencies accentuated
themselves when he returned to his native land, working
in New York and going to Boston later — the period of his
service in The Atlantic Monthly. He reviewed, noted,
sketched, read, edited long before he won his way as a novel-
ist, long before he deemed himself equipped for the part.
The conception of the novelist's art formed by Howells ren-
ders a work of fiction by an inexperienced young man an
absurdity, a contradiction in terms. We need not wonder,
then, if his great novels are the work of his maturity.

Howells won for Boston its fame for "culture" with those
directly outside its influence. He created the Boston young
lady, famous for her doubts, her philosophy, her scruples
and her delicacies. The inner exclusive world of scholars
and professors, with its sprinkling of scholar merchants and
intellectual politicians knew of this position of Boston. How-
ells took the fame of the town in this detail into the street.
His Bostonians are known wherever the language they speak
has echoed. He rediscovered the Athens of America and
made it the theme of paragraphs in the newspapers. In
"fact, the possibilities of American life as dealt with in the
realistic manner were a surprise to the readers of novels.
It ought to be pointed out here, nevertheless, that Howells
brought to his realism a genius for style, a humor of the
rarest kind, a dramatic instinct that could make the most
of the slightest situation, a knowledge of the American char-
acter altogether unprecedented and an experience in the
circles he described which no other man of his generation
could be given credit for. This is a very important point
in estimating the theory of realism against romanticism upon
which his art is based. Had he been a mediocrity his real-
ism would have had no vogue. His imitators are for the
most part beneath contempt, being destitute of his rare
equipment.

It has been insisted that "A Hazard of New Fortunes" is
the most "important" of all the novels of Howells. The

xiv INTRODUCTION

coming of a new time is distinctly foreseen by the artist who
created this masterpiece. The somewhat smug and com-
placent America which told itself that all the problems of
"democracy" had been solved is here given a blow. It was
a great blow at the time. It might be thought a gentle tap
on the cheek in this age. The nation is in the first faint
breath of the spirit that was to bring Socialism to all man-
kind as the central economic idea of a world proletariat.
The things which the book is concerned with are common-
places now, but the picture of the time when they were
strange and new is vivid. We have the humor, the dialogue,
the insight into character, the dramatic instinct for the su-
preme moment, the style and the plot — the combination of
many merits into a single effect which is the gift of Howells,
the power that makes "A Hazard of New Fortunes" a work
of art as well as a wonderful story.

ALEXANDER HARVEY.

"We have the humor, the dialogue, the instinct into char-
acter, the dramatic instinct for the supreme moment, the
style and the plot — the combination of many merits into a
single effect which is the gift of Howells, the power that
makes 'A Hazard of New Fortunes' a work of art as well
as a wonderful story."

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES
VOL. I

A HAZAED OF NEW FORTUNES.

PART FIRST.
I.

"Now, you think this thing over, March, and let
me know the last of next week," said Fulkerson.
He got up from the chair which he had been sitting
astride, with his face to its back, and tilting toward
March on its hind-legs, and came and rapped upon
his table with his thin bamboo stick. " What you
want to do is to get out of the insurance business,
anyway. You acknowledge that yourself. You
never liked it, and now it makes you sick ; in other
words, it 's killing you. You ain't an insurance man
by nature. You're a natural-born literary man;
and you 've been going against the grain. Now, I
offer you a chance to go with the grain. I don't say
you 're going to make your everlasting fortune, but
I'll give you a living salary, and if the thing suc-
ceeds you '11 share in its success. We '11 all share in
its success. That's the beauty of it. I tell you,
VOL. I.— 1

2 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

March, this is the greatest idea that has been struck

since " Fulkerson stopped and searched his

mind for a fit image — "since the creation of man."

He put his leg up over the corner of March's
table and gave himself a sharp cut on the thigh, and
leaned forward to get the full effect of his words
upon his listener.

March had his hands clasped together behind his
head, and he took one of them down long enough
to put- his inkstand and mucilage-bottle out of
Fulkerson's way. After many years' experiment of
a moustache and whiskers, he now wore his grizzled
beard full, but cropped close ; it gave him a certain
grimness, corrected by the gentleness of his eyes.

"Some people don't think much of the creation
of man, nowadays. Why stop at that 1 Why not
say since the morning stars sang together ? "

"No, sir; no, sir! I don't want to claim too
much, and I draw the line at the creation of man.
I 'm satisfied with that But if you want to ring
the morning stars into the prospectus, all right; I
won't go back on you."

" But I don't understand why you 've set your
mind on me," March said. "I haven't had any
magazine experience, you know that ; and I haven't
seriously attempted to do anything in literature
since I was married. I gave up smoking and the
Muse together. I suppose I could still manage a
cigar, but I don't believe I could "

"Muse worth a cent." Fulkerson took the
thought out of his mouth and put it into his own

A HAZARD OF NjBW FORTUNES. 3

words. " I know. Well, I don't want you to.
I don't care if you never write a line for the thing,
though you needn't reject anything of yours, if it
happens to be good, on that account. And I don't
want much experience in my editor ; rather not
have it. You told me, didn't you, that you used
to do some newspaper work before you settled
down?"

"Yes; I thought my lines were permanently cast
in those places once. It was more an accident than
anything else that I got into the insurance business.
I suppose I secretly hoped that if I made my living
by something utterly different, I could come more
freshly to literature proper in my leisure."

" I see ; and you found the insurance business
too many for you. Well, anyway, you've always
had a hankering for the inkpots ; and the fact that
you first gave me the idea of this thing shows
that you've done more or less thinking about
magazines."

" Yes— less."

"Well, all right. Now don't you be troubled.
jt know what I want, generally speaking, and in
this particular instance I want you. I might get
a man of more experience, but I should probably
get a man of more prejudice and self-conceit along
with him, and a man with a following of the literary
hangers-on that are sure to get round an editor
sooner or later. I want to start fair; and I've
found out in the syndicate business all the men that
are worth having. But they know me, and they

4 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

don't know you, and that 's where we shall have the
pull on them. They won't be able to work the
thing. Don't you be anxious about the experience.
I Ve got experience enough of my own to run a
dozen editors. What I want is an editor who has
taste, and you Ve got it ; and conscience, and you 've
got it ; and horse-sense, and you Ve got that. And
I like you because you 're a Western man, and I 'm
another. I do cotton to a Western man when I
find him off East here, holding his own with the
best of 'em, and showing 'em that he 's just as much
civilised as they are. We both know what it is to
have our bright home in the setting sun ; heigh "? "

" I think we Western men who Ve come East are
apt to take ourselves a little too objectively, and to
feel ourselves rather more representative than we
need," March remarked.

Fulkerson was delighted. " You Ve hit it ! We
do ! We are ! "

" And as for holding my own, I 'm not very proud
of what I Ve done in that way ; it 's been very little
to hold. But I know what you mean, Fulkerson,
and I Ve felt the same thing myself ; it warmed me
toward you when we first met. I can't help suffus-
ing a little to any man when I hear that he was
born on the other side of the Alleghanies. It 's per-
fectly stupid. I despise the same thing when I see
it in Boston people."

Fulkerson pulled first one of his blond whiskers
and then the other, and twisted the end of each into
a point, which he left to untwine itself. He fixed

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 5

March with his little eyes, which had a curious
innocence in their cunning, and tapped the desk im-
mediately in front of him. " What I like about you
is that you 're broad in your sympathies. The first
time I saw you, that night on the Quebec boat, I said
to myself, ' There 's a man I want to know. There 's
a human being.' I was a little afraid of Mrs.
March and the children, but I felt at home with
you — thoroughly domesticated — before I passed a
word with you ; and when you spoke first, and
opened up with a joke over that fellow's tableful of
light literature and Indian moccasins and birch-bark
toy canoes and stereoscopic views, I knew that we
were brothers — spiritual twins. I recognised the
Western style of fun, and I thought, when you said
you were from Boston, that it was some of the same.
But I see now that it 's being a cold fact, as far as
the last fifteen or twenty years count, is just so
much gain. You know both sections, and you can
make this thing go, from ocean to ocean."

"We might ring that into the prospectus, too,"
March suggested, with a smile. " You might call
the thing From Sea to Sea. By the way, what are
you going to call it ? "

"I haven't decided yet; that's one of the things
I wanted to talk with you about. I had thought of
The Syndicate-, but it sounds kind of dry, and it
don't seem to cover the ground exactly. I should
like something that would express the co-operative
character of the thing ; but I don't know as I can
get it."

6 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

" Might call it The Mutual"

" They 'd thiiik it was an insurance paper. No,
that won't do. But Mutual comes pretty near the
idea. If we could get something like that, it would
pique curiosity ; and then if we could get paragraphs
afloat explaining that the contributors were to be
paid according to the sales, it would be a first-
rate ad."

He bent a wide, anxious, inquiring smile upon
March, who suggested lazily, "You might call it
The Round-Robin. That would express the central
idea of irresponsibility. As I understand, every-
body is to share the profits and be exempt from the
losses. Or, if I'm wrong, and the reverse is true,
you might call it The Army of Martyrs. Come, that
sounds attractive, Fulkerson ! Or what do you
think of The Fifth Wheel 1 That would forestall the
criticism that there are too many literary periodicals
already. Or, if you want to put forward the idea of
complete independence, you could call it The Free
Lance ; or "

" Or The Hog on Ice — either stand up or fall down,
you know," Fulkerson broke in coarsely. "But
we '11 leave the name of the magazine till we get the
editor. I see the poison 's beginning to work in
you, March; and if I had time, I'd leave the
result to time. But I haven't. I've got to know
inside of the next week To come down to business
with you, March, I shan't start this thing unless I
can get you to take hold of it."

He seemed to expect some acknowledgment, and

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 7

March said, " Well, that 's very nice of you,
Fulkerson."

"No, sir; no, sir! I've always liked you, and
wanted you, ever since we met that first night. I
had this thing inchoately in my mind then, when
I was telling you about the newspaper syndicate
business — beautiful vision of a lot of literary fellows
breaking loose from the bondage of publishers, and
playing it alone "

" You might call it The Lone Hand ; that would
be attractive," March interrupted. " The whole
West would know what you meant."

Fulkerson was talking seriously, and March was
listening seriously ; but they both broke off and
laughed. Fulkerson got down off the table, and
made some turns about the room. It was growing
late ; the October sun had left the top of the tall
windows ; it was still clear day, but it would soon
be twilight ; they had been talking a long time.
Fulkerson came and stood with his little feet wide
apart, and bent his little lean, square face on March:
" See here ! How much do you get out of this thing
here, anyway ? "

" The insurance business 1 " March hesitated a
moment, and then said, with a certain . effort of re-
serve, "At present about three thousand/' He
looked up at Fulkerson with a glance, as if he
had a mind to enlarge upon the fact, and then
dropped his eyes without saying more.

Whether Fulkerson had not thought it so much
or not, he said, ."Well, I'll give you thirty-five

8 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

hundred. Come ! And your chances in the suc-
cess."

" We won't count the chances in the success.
And I don't believe thirty-five hundred would go
any further in New York than three thousand in
Boston."

" But you don't live on three thousand here 1 "

" No ; my wife has a little property."

" Well, she won't lose the income if you go to
New York. I suppose you pay six or seven hundred
a year for your house here. You can get plenty
of flats in New York for the same money ; and I
understand you can get all sorts of provisions for
less than you pay now — three or four cents on the
pound. Come ! "

This was by no means the first talk they had had
about the matter; every three or four months during
the past two years the syndicate man had dropped
in upon March to air the scheme and to get his im-
pressions of it. This had happened so often that it
had come to be a sort of joke between them. But
now Fulkerson clearly meant business, and March
had a struggle to maintain himself in a firm poise of
refusal.

" I dare say it wouldn't — or it needn't — cost so
very much more, but I don't want to go to New
York ; or my wife doesn't. It 's the same thing."

" A good deal samer," Fulkerson admitted.

March did not quite like his candour, and he went
on with dignity. " It 's very natural she shouldn't.
She has always lived in Boston ; she 's attached to

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 9 -

the place. Now, if you were going to start The
Fifth Wheel in Boston "

Fulkerson slowly and sadly shook his head, but
decidedly, " Wouldn't do. You might as well say
St. Louis or Cincinnati. There 's only one city that
belongs to the whole country, and that's New
York."

" Yes, I know," sighed March ; " and Boston be-
longs to the Bostonians ; but they like you to make
yourself at home while you 're visiting."

" If you '11 agree to make phrases like that, right
along, and get them into The Round-Robin some-
how, I '11 say four thousand," said Fulkerson. " You
think it over now, March. You talk it over with
Mrs. March ; I know you will, anyway ; and I
might as well make a virtue of advising you to
do it. Tell her I advised you to do it, and you
let me know before next Saturday what you've
decided."

March shut down the rolling top of his desk in
the corner of the room, and walked Fulkerson out
before him. It was so late that the last of the chore-
women who washed down the marble halls and stairs
of the great building had wrung out her floor-cloth
and departed, leaving spotless stone and a clean
damp smell in the darkening corridors behind her.

" Couldn't offer you such swell quarters in New
York, March," Fulkerson said as he went tack-tack-
ing down the steps with his small boot-heels. " But
I Ve got my eye on a little house round in West
Eleventh Street, that I 'm going to fit up for my
1*

10 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

bachelor's hall in the third story, and adapt for The
Lone Hand in the first and second, if this thing goes
through ; and I guess we '11 be pretty comfortable.
It's right on the Sand Strip — no malaria of any
kind."

" I don't know that I 'm going to share its salu-
brity with you yet," March sighed in an obvious
travail which gave Fulkerson hopes.

" Oh yes, you are," he coaxed. " Now, you talk
it over with your wife. You give her a fair, unpre-
judiced chance at the thing on its merits, and I 'm
very much mistaken in Mrs. March if she doesn't
tell you to go in and win. We 're bound to win ! "

They stood on the outside steps of the vast edifice
beetling like a granite crag above them, with the
stone groups of an allegory of life-insurance fore-
shortened in the bas-relief overhead. March ab-
sently lifted his eyes to it. It was suddenly strange
after so many years' familiarity, and so was the well-
known street in its Saturday-evening solitude. He
asked himself, with prophetic • homesickness, if it
were an omen of what was to be. But he only said
musingly, " A fortnightly. You know that didn't
work in England. The Fortnightly is published once
a month now."

" It works in France," Fulkerson retorted. " The
Revue des Deux Mondes is still published twice a
month. I guess we can make it work in America —
with illustrations."

" Going to have illustrations ? "

" My dear boy ! What are you giving me 1 Do

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 11

I look like the sort of lunatic who would start a
thing in the twilight of the nineteenth century with-
out illustrations 1 Come off ! "

" Ah, that complicates it ! I don't know anything
about art." March's look of discouragement con-
fessed the hold the scheme had taken upon him.

" I don't want you to ! " Fulkerson retorted.
" Don't you suppose I shall have an art man 1 "

" And will they — the artists — work at a reduced
rate too, like the writers, with the hopes of a share
in the success 1 "

" Of course they will ! And if I want any par-
ticular man, for a card, I '11 pay him big money
besides. But I can get plenty of first-rate sketches
on my own terms. You '11 see ! They '11 pour in ! "

"Look here, Fulkerson," said March, "you'd
better call this fortnightly of yours The Madness of
the Half -Moon ; or Bedlam, Broke Loose wouldn't be
bad ! Why do you throw away all your hard earn-
ings on such a crazy venture ? Don't do it ! " The
kindness which March had always felt, in spite of
his wife's first misgivings and reservations, for the
meny, hopeful, slangy, energetic little creature
trembled in his voice. They had both formed a
friendship for Fulkerson during the week they were
together in Quebec. When he was not working the
newspapers there, he went about with them over the
familiar ground they were showing their children,
and was simply grateful for the chance, as well as
very entertaining about it all. The children liked
him, too ; when they got the clew to his intention,

12 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

and found that he was not quite serious in many of
the things he said, they thought he was great fun.
They were always glad when their father brought
him home on the occasion of Fulkerson's visits to
Boston ; and Mrs. March, though of a charier hospi-
tality, welcomed Fulkerson with a grateful sense of
his admiration for her husband. He had a way of
treating March with deference, as an older and abler
man, and of qualifying the freedom he used toward
every one with an implication that March tolerated
it voluntarily, which she thought very sweet, and
even refined.

"Ah, now you're talking like a man and a
brother " said Fulkerson. "Why, March, old
man, do you suppose I 'd come on here and try to
talk you into this thing if I wasn't morally, if I
wasn't perfectly, sure of success ? There isn't any
if or and about it. I know my ground, every inch ;
and I don't stand alone on it," he added, with a
significance which did not escape March. " When
you've made up your mind, I can give you the
proof ; but I 'm not at liberty now to say anything
more. I tell you it 's going to be a triumphal march
from the word go, with coffee and lemonade for the
procession along the whole line. All you 've got to
do is to fall in." He stretched out his hand to
March. " You let me know as soon as you can."

March deferred taking his hand till he could ask,
" Where are you going 1 "

" Parker House. Take the half-past ten for Xew
York to-night."

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 13

"I thought I might walk your way." March
looked at his watch. " But I shouldn't have time.
Good-bye ! "

He now let Fulkerson have his hand, and they
exchanged a cordial pressure. Fulkerson started
off at a quick, light pace. Half a block away he
stopped, turned round, and seeing March still stand-
ing where he had left him, he called back joyously,
" I Ve got the name ! "

« What ? "

" Every Other Week? .

« It isn't bad."

« Ta-ta 1 "

IL

ALL the way up to the South End March pro-
longed his talk with Fulkerson, and at his door in
Nankeen Square he closed the parley with a plump
refusal to go to New York on any terms. His
daughter Bella was lying in wait for him in the hall,
and she threw her arms round his neck with the
exuberance of her fourteen years, and with some-
thing of the histrionic intention of her sex. He
pressed on, with her clinging about him, to the
library, and, in the glow of his decision against
Fulkerson, kissed his wife, where she sat by the
study lamp reading the Transcript through her first
pair of eye-glasses : it was agreed in the family that
she looked distinguished in them, or at any rate
cultivated. She took them off to give him a glance
of question, and their son Tom looked up from his
book for a moment ; he was in his last year at the
high-school, and was preparing for Harvard.

"I didn't get away from the office till half-past
five," March explained to his wife's glance, "and
then I walked. I suppose dinner's waiting. I'm
sorry, but I won't do it any more."

At table he tried to be gay with Bella, who

A HAZAUD OF NEW FORTUNES. 15

babbled at him with a voluble pertness, which her
brother had often advised her parents to check in
her, unless they wanted her to be universally
despised.

" Papa, "she shouted, at last, "you 're not listening !"

As soon as possible his wife told the children they
might be excused. Then she asked, "What is it,
Basil 1 "

" What is what 1 " he retorted, with a specious
brightness that did not avail.

" What is on your mind I "

" How do you know there 's anything 1 "

" Your kissing me so when you came in, for one
thing."

"Don't I always kiss you when I come in ? "

" Not now. I suppose it isn't necessary any more.
Cela va sans baiser."

" Yes, I guess it 's so ; we get along without the
symbolism now." He stopped, but she knew that
he had not finished.

" Is it about your business 1 Have they done
anything more."

" No ; I 'm still in the dark. I don't know
whether they mean to supplant me, or whether they
ever did. But I wasn't thinking about that. Ful-
kerson has been to see me again."

" Fulkerson 1 " She brightened at the name, and
March smiled too. " Why didn't you bring him to
dinner 1 "

" I wanted to talk with you Then you do like
him?"

16 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

" What has that got to do with it, Basil 1 "

" Nothing ! nothing ! That is, he was boring
away about that scheme of his again. He 's got it
into definite shape at last."

" What shape 1 "

March outlined it for her, and his wife seized
its main features with the intuitive sense of affairs
which makes women such good business-men, when
they will let it.

" It sounds perfectly crazy," she said finally.
" But it mayn't be. The only thing I didn't like
about Mr. Fulkerson was his always wanting to
chance things. But what have you got to do with
it?"

" What have I got to do with it ? " March toyed
with the delay the question gave him ; then he said,
with a sort of deprecatory laugh, " It seems that
Fulkerson has had his eye on me ever since we met
that night on the Quebec boat. I opened up pretty
freely to him, as you do to a man you never expect
to see again, and when I found he was in that news-
paper syndicate business, I told him about my early
literary ambitions "

" You can't say that / ever discouraged them,
Basil," his wife put in. "I should have been will-
ing, any time, to give up everything for them."

" Well, he says that I first suggested this brilliant
idea to him. Perhaps I did; I don't remember.
When he told me about his supplying literature
to newspapers for simultaneous publication, he says
I asked, ' Why not apply the principle of co-opera-

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 17

tion to a magazine, and run it in the interest of the
contributors 1 ' and that set him to thinking, and he
thought out his plan of a periodical, which should
pay authors and artists a low price outright for their
work, and give them a chance of the profits in the
way of a percentage. After all, it isn't so very dif-
ferent from the chances an author takes when he
publishes a book. And Fulkerson thinks that the
novelty of the thing would pique public curiosity,
if it didn't arouse public sympathy. And the long
and short of it is, Isabel, that he wants me to help
edit it."

" To edit it ? " His wife caught her breath, and
she took a little time to realise the fact, while she
stared hard at her husband to make sure he was not
joking.

" Yes. He says he owes it all to me ; that I in-
vented the idea — the germ — the microbe."

His wife had now realised the fact, at least in a
degree that excluded trifling with it. " That is very
honourable of Mr. Fulkerson ; and if he owes it to
you, it was the least he could do." Having recog-
nised her husband's claim to the honour done him,
she began to kindle with a sense of the honour
itself, and the value of the opportunity. "It's a
very high compliment to you, Basil ; a very high
compliment. And you could give up this wretched
insurance business that you 've always hated so, and
that 's making you so unhappy now that you think
they 're going to take it from you. Give it up, and
take Mr. Fulkerson's offer ! It 's a perfect inter'

18 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

position, coming just at this time ! Why, do it !
Mercy!" she suddenly arrested herself, "he wouldn't
expect you to get along on the possible profits 1 "
Her face expressed the awfulness of the notion.

March smiled reassuringly, and waited to give
himself the pleasure of the sensation he meant to
give her. " If I '11 make striking phrases for it and
edit it too, he '11 give me four thousand dollars."

He leaned back in his chair, and stuck his hands
deep into his pockets, and watched his wife's face,
luminous with the emotions that flashed through
her mind — doubt, joy, anxiety.

" Basil ! You don't mean it ! Why, take it !
Take it instantly \ Oh, what a thing to happen !
Oh, what luck ! But you deserve it, if you first
suggested it. What an escape, what a triumph over
all those hateful insurance people ! 0 Basil, I 'm
afraid he '11 change his mind ! You ought to have
accepted on the spot. You might have known I
would approve, and you could so easily have taken
it back if I didn't. Telegraph him now ! Run right
out with the despatch ! Or we can send Tom ! "

In these imperatives of Mrs. March's there was
always much of the conditional. She meant that
he should do what she said, if it were entirely right ;
and she never meant to be considered as having
urged him.

"And suppose his enterprise went wrong?" her
husband suggested.

"It won't go wrong. Hasn't he made a success
of his syndicate ? "

"He says so — yes."

A HAZARD OF NEW I ORTUNES. 19

" Very well, then, it stands to reason that he '11
succeed in this, too. He wouldn't undertake it if
he didn't know it would succeed ; he must have
capital."

"It will take a great deal to get such a thing
going ; and even if he 's got an Angel behind
him "

She caught at the word : " An Angel ? "

" It 's what the theatrical people call a financial
backer. He dropped a hint oi something of that
kind."

"Of course, he's got an Angel," said his wife,
promptly adopting the word. " And even if he
hadn't, still, Basil, I should be willing to have you
risk it. The risk isn't so great, is it? We
shouldn't be ruined if it failed altogether. With
our stocks we have two thousand a year, anyway,
and we could pinch through on that till you got
into some other business afterward, especially if
we 'd saved something out of your salary while it
lasted. Basil, I want you to trjT it ! I know it will
give you a new lease of life to have a congenial
occupation." March laughed, bit his wife persisted.
" I 'm all for your trying it, Basil ; indeed I am.
If it 's an experiment, you can give it up."

"It can give me up, too."

" Oh, nonsense ! I guess theie 's not much fear of
that. Now, I want you to telegraph Mr. Fulkerson,
so that he '11 find the despatch waiting for him
when he gets to New York. I '11 take the whole
responsibility, Basil, and I '11 risk all the conse-
quences."

III.

MARCH'S face had sobered more and more as she
followed one hopeful burst with another, and now
it expressed a positive pain. But he forced a smile,
and said : " There 's a little condition attached.
Where did you suppose it was to be published ?"

" Why, in Boston, of course. Where else should
it be published 1 "

She looked at him for the intention of his question
so searchingly that he quite gave up the attempt to
be gay about it. " No," he said gravely, " it 's to
be published in New York."

She fell back in her chair. " In New York ? "
She leaned forward over the table toward him, as if
to make sure that she heard aright, and said, with
all the keen reproach that he could have expected,
" In New York, Basil ! Oh, how could you have let
me go on ? "

He had a sufficiently rueful face in owning, " I
oughtn't to have done it, but I got started wrong.
I couldn't help putting the best foot forward at first
— or as long as the whole thing was in the air. I
didn't know that you would take so much to the
general enterprise, or else I should have mentioned

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 21

the New York condition at once ; but of course that
puts an end to it."

"Oh, of course," she assented sadly. "We
couldn't go to New York."

" No, I know that," he said ; and with this a per-
verse desire to tempt her to the impossibility awoke
in him, though he was really quite cold about the
affair himself now. " Fulkerson thought we could
get a nice flat in New York for about what the
interest and taxes came to here, and provisions are
cheaper. But I should rather not experiment at my
time of life. If I could have been caught younger,
I might- have been inured to New York, but I don't
believe I could stand it now."

" How I hate to have you talk that way, Basil !
You are young enough to try anything — anywhere ;
but you know I don't like New York. I don't
approve of it. It 's so big, and so hideous ! Of
course I shouldn't mind that ; but I 've always lived
in Boston, and the children were born and have all
their friendships and associations here." She added,
with the helplessness that discredited her good-sense
and did her injustice, " I have just got them both
into the Friday afternoon class at Papanti's, and you
know how difficult that is."

March could not fail to take advantage of an occa-
sion like this. " Well, that alone ought to settle it.
Under the circumstances it would be flying in the
face of Providence to leave Boston. The mere fact
of a brilliant opening like that offered me on The
Microbe, and the halcyon future which Fulkerson

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

promises if we '11 come to New York, is as dust in
the balance against the advantages of the Friday
afternoon class."

" Basil," she appealed solemnly, " have I ever in-
terfered with your career ?"

" I never had any for you to interfere with, my
dear."

" Basil ! Haven't I always had faith in you ?
And don't you suppose that if I thought it would
really be for your advancement, I would go to New
York or anywhere with you V

" No, my dear, I don't," he teased. " If it would
be for my salvation, yes, perhaps ; but not short of
that ; and I should have to prove by a cloud of wit-
nesses that it would I don't blame you. I wasn't
born in Boston, but I understand how you feel.
And really, my deai," he added, without irony, "I
never seriously thought of asking you to go to New
York. I was dazzle 1 by Fulkerson's offer, I Jll own
that ; but his choice of me as editor sapped my con-
fidence in him."

" I don't like to hear you say that, Basil," she en-
treated.

"Well, of course there were mitigating circum-
stances. I could se) that Fulkerson meant to keep
the whip-hand himself, and that was reassuring.
And besides, if the Reciprocity Life should happen
not to want my services any longer, it wouldn't be
quite like giving up a certainty ; though, as a matter
of business, I let Fulkerson get that impression ; I
felt rather sneaking to do it. But, if the worst

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 23

comes to the worst, I can look about for something
to do in Boston ; and, anyhow, people don't starve
on two thousand a year, though it 's convenient to
have five. The fact is, I'm too old to change so
radically. If you don't like my saying that, then
you are, Isabel, and so are the children. I've no
right to take them from the home we 've made, and
to change the whole course of their lives, unless I
can assure them of something, and I can't assure
them of anything. Boston is big enough for us, and
it 's certainly prettier than New York. I always feel
a little proud of hailing from Boston ; my pleasure
in the place mounts the further I get away from it.
But I do appreciate it, my dear, I 've no more desire
to leave it than you have. You may be sure that if
you don't want to take the children out of the
Friday afternoon class, I don't want to leave my
library here, and all the ways I 've got set in. We '11
keep on. Very likely the company won't supplant
me, and if it does, and Watkins gets the place,
he'll give me a subordinate position of some sort.
Cheer up, Isabel ! I have put Satan and his angel,
Fulkerson, behind me, and it 's all right. Let 's go
in to the children."

He came round the table to Isabel, where she sat
in a growing distraction, and lifted her by the waist
from her chair.

She sighed deeply. " Shall we tell the children
about it ? "

" No. What 's the use, now ? "

" There wouldn't be any," she assented. When
C

24 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

they entered the family room, where the boy and
girl sat on either side of the lamp working out the
lessons for Monday which they had left over from
the day before, she asked, " Children, how would
you like to live in New York 1 "

Bella made haste to get in her word first. "And
give up the Friday afternoon class ? " she wailed.

Tom growled from his book, without lifting his
eyes, "I shouldn't want to go to Columbia. They
haven't got any dormitories, and you have to board
round anywhere. Are you going to New York 1 "
He now deigned to look up at his father.

" No, Tom. You and Bella have decided me
against it. Your perspective shows the affair in
its true proportions. I had an offer to go to New
York, but I Ve refused it."

IV.

MARCH'S irony fell harmless from the children's
preoccupation with their own affairs, but he knew
that his wife felt it, and this added to the bitterness
which prompted it. He blamed her for letting her
provincial narrowness prevent his accepting Fulker-
son's offer quite as much as if he had otherwise
entirely wished to accept it. His world, like most
worlds, had been superficially a disappointment. He
was no richer than at the beginning, though in
marrying he had given up some tastes, some prefer-
ences, some aspirations, in the hope of indulging
them later, with larger means and larger leisure.
His wife had not urged him to do it; in fact, her
pride, as she said, was in his fitness for the life he
had renounced ; but she had acquiesced, and they
had been very happy together. That is to say, they
made up their quarrels or ignored them.

They often accused each other of being selfish
and indifferent, but she knew that he would always
sacrifice himself for her and the children ; and he,
on his part, with many gibes and mockeries, wholly
trusted in her. They had grown practically tolerant
of each other's disagreeable traits ; and the danger
VOL. I.— 2

26 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

that really threatened them was that they should
grow too well satisfied with themselves, if not with
each other. They were not sentimental, they were
rather matter-of-fact in their motives ; but they
had both a sort of humorous fondness for senti-
mentality. They liked to play with the romantic,
from the safe vantage-ground of their real practi-
cality, and to divine the poetry of the commonplace.
Their peculiar point of view separated them from
most other people, with whom their means of self-
comparison were not so good since their marriage as
before. Then they had travelled and seen much of
the world, and they had formed tastes which they
had not always been able to indulge, but of which
they felt that the possession reflected distinction on
them. It enabled them to look down upon those
who were without such tastes ; but they were not
ill-natured, and so they did not look down so much
with contempt as with amusement. In their un-
fashionable neighbourhood they had the fame of
being not exclusive precisely, but very much wrapt
up in themselves and their children.

Mrs. March was reputed to be very cultivated,
and Mr. March even more so, among the simpler
folk around them. Their house had some good
pictures, which her aunt had brought home from
Europe in more affluent days, and it abounded in
books on which he spent more than he ought
They had beautified it in every way, and had un-
consciously taken credit to themselves for it. They
felt, with a glow almost of virtue, how perfectly it

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 27

fitted their lives and their children's, and they
believed that somehow it expressed their characters
— that it was like them. They went out very little ;
she remained shut up in its refinement, working the
good of her own'; and he went to his business, and
hurried back to forget it, and dream his dream of
intellectual achievement in the flattering atmosphere
of her sympathy. He could not conceal from him-
self that his divided life was somewhat like Charles
Lamb's, and there were times when, as he had ex-
pressed to Fulkerson, he believed that its division
was favourable to the freshness of his interest in
literature. It certainly kept it a high privilege, a
sacred refuge. Now and then he wrote something,
and got it printed after long delays, and when they
met on the St. Lawrence, Fulkerson had some of
March's verses in his pocket-book, which he had
cut out of a stray newspaper and carried about for
years, because they pleased his fancy so much ; they
formed an immediate bond of union between the
men when their authorship was traced and owned,
and this gave a pretty colour of romance to their
acquaintance. But for the most part, March was
satisfied to read. He was proud of reading criti-
cally, and he kept in the current of literary interests
and controversies. It all seemed to him, and to his
wife at second-hand, very meritorious ; he could not
help contrasting his life and its inner elegance with
that of other men who had no such resources. He
thought that he was not arrogant about it, because
he did full justice to the good qualities of those

28 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

other people ; he congratulated himself upon the
democratic instincts which enabled him to do this ;
and neither he nor his wife supposed that they were
selfish persons. On the contrary, they were very
sympathetic ; there was no good cause that they did
not wish well ; they had a generous scorn of all
kinds of narrow-heartedness ; if it had ever come
into their way to sacrifice themselves for others,
they thought they would have done so, but they
never asked1 why it had not come in their way.
They were very gentle and kind, even when most
elusive ; and they taught their children to loathe all
manner of social cruelty. March was of so watchful
a conscience in some respects that he denied himself
the pensive pleasure of lapsing into the melancholy
of unfulfilled aspirations ; but he did not see that if
he had abandoned them, it had been for what he
held dearer ; generally he felt as if he had turned
from them with a high altruistic aim. The practical
expression of his life was that it was enough to
provide well for his family; to have cultivated
tastes, and to gratify them to the extent of his
means ; to be rather distinguished, even in the
simplification of his desires. He believed, and his
wife believed, that if the time ever came when he
really wished to make a sacrifice to the fulfilment of
the aspirations so long postponed, she would be
ready to join with heart and hand.

When he went to her room from his library,
where she left him the whole evening with the
children, he found her before the glass thoughtfully

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 29

removing the first dismantling pin from her back
hair.

" I can't help feeling," she grieved into the mirror,
" that it 's I who keep you from accepting that offer.
I know it is ! I could go West with you, or into a
new country — anywhere ; but New York terrifies
me. J don't like New York, I never did ; it dis-
heartens and distracts me ; I can't find myself in it;
I shouldn't know how to shop. I know I 'm foolish
and narrow and provincial," she went on ; " but I
could never have any inner quiet in New York ; I
couldn't live in the spirit there. I suppose people
do. It can't be that all those millions "

" Oh, not so bad as that ! " March interposed,
laughing. " There aren't quite two."

"I thought there were four or five. Well, no
matter. You see what I am, Basil. I 'm terribly
limited. I couldn't make my sympathies go round
two million people; I should be wretched. I sup-
pose I'm standing in the way of your highest
interest, but I can't help it. We took each other
for better or worse, and you must try to bear with
me " She broke off and began to cry.

" Stop it ! " shouted March. " I tell you I never
cared anything for Fulkerson's scheme or enter-
tained it seriously, and I shouldn't, if he 'd pro-
posed to carry it out in Boston." This was not
quite true : but in the retrospect it seemed suffi-
ciently so for the purposes of argument. "Don't
eay another word about it. The thing 's over now,
and I don't want to think of it any more. We

30 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

couldn't change its nature if we talked all night.
But I want you to understand that it isn't your
limitations that are in the way. It's mine. I
shouldn't have the courage to take such a place ;
I don't think I 'm fit for it ; and that 's the long
and short of it."

"Oh, you don't know how it hurts me to haye you
say that, Basil."

The next morning, as they sat together at break-
fast, without the children, whom they let lie late on
Sunday, Mrs. March said to her husband, silent over
his fish-balls and baked beans : " We will go to New
York. I Ve decided it."

" Well, it takes two to decide that," March re-
torted. " We are not going to New York."

" Yes, we are. I 've thought it out. Now, listen."

" Oh, I 'm willing to listen," he consented airily.

" You Ve always wanted to get out of the insur-
ance business, and now with that fear of being
turned out which you have, you mustn't neglect
this offer. I suppose it has its risks, but it's a
risk keeping on as we are; and perhaps you will
make a great success of it. I do want you to try,
Basil. If I could once feel that you had fairly seen
what you could do in literature, I should die happy."

" Not immediately after, I hope," he suggested,
taking the second cup of coffee she had been pour-
ing out for him. " And Boston ? "

"We needn't make a complete break. We can
keep this place for the present, anyway ; we could

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 31

let it for the winter, and come back in the summer
next year. It would be change enough from New
York."

" Fulkerson and I hadn't got as far as to talk of a
vacation."

" No matter. The children and I could come.
And if you didn't like New York, or the enterprise
failed, you could get into something in Boston
again ; and we have enough to live on till you did.
Yes, Basil, I 'm going."

" I can see by the way your chin trembles that
nothing could stop you. You may go to New York
if you wsh, Isabel, but I shall stay here."

" Be serious, Basil. I 'm in earnest."

" Serious 1 If I were any more serious I should
shed tears. Come, my dear, I know what you mean,
and if I had my heart set on this thing — Fulkerson
always calls it 'this thing' — I would cheerfully
accept any sacrifice you could make to it. But I 'd
rather not offer you up on a shrine I don't feel any
particular faith in. I 'm very comfortable where I
am ; that is, I know just where the pinch comes, and
if it comes harder, why, I 've got used to bearing that
kind of pinch. I 'm too old to change pinches."

" Now, that does decide me."

"It decides me, too."

"I will take all the. responsibility, Basil," she
pleaded.

" Oh yes ; but you '11 hand it back to me as soon
as you've carried your point with it. There's
nothing mean about you, Isabel, where responsibility

32 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

is concerned. No; if I do this thing — Fulkerson
again ! I can't get away from ' this thing ' ; it 's
ominous — I must do it because I want to do it, and
not because you wish that you wanted me to do it.
I understand your position, Isabel, and that you 're
really acting from a generous impulse, but there's
nothing so precarious at our time of life as a generous
impulse. When we were younger we could stand
it ; we could give way to it and take the consequences.
But now we can't bear it. We must act from cold
reason even in the ardour of self-sacrifice."

" Oh, as if you did that ! " his wife retorted.

" Is that any cause why you shouldn't ? " She
could not say that it was, and he went on trium-
phantly : " No, I won't take you away from the
only safe place on the planet, and plunge you into
the most perilous, and then have you say in your>
revulsion of feeling that you were all against it from
the first, and you gave way because you saw I had
my heart set on it." He supposed he was treating
the matter humorously, but in this sort of banter
between husband and wife there is always much
more than the joking. March had seen some pretty
feminine inconsistencies and trepidations which once
charmed him in his wife hardening into traits of
middle-age, which were very like those of less
interesting older women. . The sight moved him
with a kind of pathos, but he felt the result hinder-
ing and vexatious.

She now retorted that if he did not choose to take
her at her word he need not, but that whatever he

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 33

did she should have nothing to reproach herself with ;
and, at least, he could not say that she had trapped
him into anything.

" What do you^mean by trapping ? " he demanded.

" I don't know what you call it," she answered ;
" but when you get me to commit myself to a thing
by leaving out the most essential point, / call it
trapping."

" I wonder you stop at trapping, if you think I
got you to favour Fulkerson's scheme, and then
sprung New York on you. I don't suppose you
do, though. But I guess we won't talk about it
any more."

He went out for a long walk, and she went to
her room. They lunched silently together in the
presence of their children, who knew that they
had been quarrelling, but were easily indifferent
to the fact, as children get to be in such cases ;
nature defends their youth, and the unhappiness
which they behold does not infect them. In the
evening, after the boy and girl had gone to bed,
the father and mother resumed their talk. He
would have liked to take it up at the point from
which it wandered into hostilities, for he felt ifc
lamentable that a matter which so seriously con-
cerned them should be confused in the fumes of
senseless anger ; and he was willing to make a tacit
acknowledgment of his own error by recurring to
the question, but she would not be content with
this, and he had to concede explicitly to her weak-
ness that she really meant it when she had asked
2*

34 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

him to accept Fulkerson's offer. He said he knew
that ; and he began soberly to talk over their pro-
spects in the event of their going to New York.

" Oh, I see you are going ! " she% twitted.

" I 'm going to stay," he answered, " and let them
turn me out of my agency here ! " and in this bitter-
ness their talk ended.

V.

His wife made no attempt to renew their talk
before March went to his business in the morning,
and they parted in dry offence. Their experience
was that these things always came right of them-
selves at last, and they usually let them. He knew
that she had really tried to consent to a thing that
was repugnant to her, and in his heart he gave her
more credit for the effort than he had allowed her
openly. She knew that she had made it with the
reservation he accused her of, and that he had a
right to feel sore at what she could ,not help. But
he left her to brood over his ingratitude, and she-
suffered him to go heavy and unfriended to meet
the chances of the day. He said to himself that
if she had assented cordially to the conditions of
Fulkerson's offer, he would have had the courage to
take all the other risks himself, and would have had
the satisfaction of resigning his place. As it was,
he must wait till he was removed ; and he figured
with bitter pleasure the pain she would feel when he
came home some. day and told her he had been sup-
planted, after it was too late to close with Fulkerson.

He found a letter on his desk from the secretary,

36 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

" Dictated," in type-writing, which briefly informed
him that Mr. Hut boll, «1»~ Inspector of Agencies,
would be in Boston on Wednesday, and would call
at his office during the forenoon. The letter was
not different in tone from many that he had formerly
received ; but the visit announced was out of the
usual order, and March believed he read his fate in
it. During the eighteen years of his connection
with it — first as a subordinate in the Boston office,
and finally as its general agent there — he had seen
a good many changes in the Reciprocity ; presidents,
vice-presidents, actuaries, and general agents had
come and gone, but there had always seemed to be
a recognition of his efficiency, or at least sufficiency,
and there had never been any manner of trouble, no
question of accounts, no apparent dissatisfaction
with his management, until latterly, when there had
begun to come from headquarters some suggestions
of enterprise in certain ways, which gave him his
first suspicions of his clerk Watkins's willingness to
succeed him ; they embodied some of Watkins's
ideas. The things proposed seemed to March un-
dignified, and even vulgar ; he had never thought
himself wanting in energy, though probably he had
left the business to take its own course in the old
lines more than he realised. Things had always
gone so smoothly that he had sometimes fancied a
peculiar regard for him in the management, which
he had the weakness to attribute to an appreciation
of what he occasionally did in literature, though in
saner moments he felt how impossible this was.

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 37

Beyond a reference from Mr. Hubbell to some piece
of March's, which had happened to meet his eye, no
one in the management ever gave a sign of con-
sciousness that their service was adorned by an
obscure literary man ; and Mr. Hubbell himself had
the effect of regarding the excursions of March's pen
as a sort of joke, and of winking at them, as he
might have winked if once in a way he had found
him a little the gayer for dining.

March wore through the day gloomily, but he had
it on his conscience not to show any resentment
toward Watkins, whom he suspected of wishing to
supplant him, and even of working to do so.
Through this self-denial he reached a better mind
concerning his wife. He determined not to make
her suffer needlessly, if the worst came to the worst ;
she would suffer enough, at the best, and till the
worst came he would spare her, and not say any-
thing about the letter he had got.

But when they met, her first glance divined that
something had happened, and her first question
frustrated his generous intention. He had to tell
her about the letter. She would not allow that it
had any significance ; but she wished him to make
an end of his anxieties, and forestall whatever it
might portend by resigning his place at once. She
said she was quite ready to go to New York ; she
had been thinking it all over, and now she really
wanted to go. He answered, soberly, that he had
thought it over, too ; and he did not wish to leave
Boston, where he had lived so long, or try a new

38 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

way of life if he could help it. He insisted that he
was quite selfish in this ; in their concessions their
quarrel vanished ; they agreed that whatever hap-
pened would be for the best ; and the next day he
went to his office fortified for any event.

His destiny, if tragical, presented itself with an
aspect which he might have found comic if it had
been another's destiny. Mr. Hubbell brought
March's removal, softened in the guise of a promo-
tion. The management at New York, it appeared,
had acted upon a suggestion of Mr. Hubbell's, and
now authorised him to offer March the editorship
of the monthly paper published in the interest of
the company ; his office Avould include the author-
ship of circulars and leaflets, in behalf of life insur-
ance, and would give play to the literary talent
which Mr. Hubbell had brought to the attention of
the management ; his salary would be nearly as
much as at present, but the work would not take
his whole time, and in a place like New York he
could get a great deal of outside writing, which they
would not object to his doing.

Mr. Hubbell seemed so sure of his acceptance of
a place in every way congenial to a man of literary
tastes, that March was afterward sorry he dismissed
the proposition with obvious irony, and had need-
lessly hurt Hubbell's feelings ; but Mrs. March had
no such regrets. She was only afraid that he had
not made his rejection contemptuous enough. " And
now," she said, " telegraph Mr. Fulkerson, and we
will go at once."

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 39

"I suppose I could still get Watkins's former
place," March suggested.

" Never ! " she retorted. " Telegraph instantly ! "

They were only afraid now that Fulkerson might
have changed his mind, and they had a wretched
day in which they heard nothing from him. It
ended with his answering March's telegram in
person. They were so glad of his coming, and so
touched by his satisfaction with his bargain, that
they laid all the facts of the case before him. He
entered fully into March's sense of the joke latent
in Mr. Hubbell's proposition ; and he tried to make
Mrs. March believe that he shared her resentment
of the indignity offered her husband.

March made a show of willingness to release him
in view of the changed situation, saying that he
held him to nothing. Fulkerson laughed, and
asked him how soon he thought he could come
on to New York He refused to reopen the ques-
tion of March's fitness with him ; he said they had
gone into that thoroughly, but he recurred to it
with Mrs. March, and confirmed her belief in his
good-sense on all points. She had been from the
first moment defiantly confident, of her husband's
ability, but till she had talked the matter over
with Fulkerson, she was secretly not sure of it ;
or, at least, she was not sure that March was not
right in distrusting himself. When she clearly un-
derstood, now, what Fulkerson intended, she had no
longer a doubt. He explained how the enterprise

differed from others, and how he needed for its
D

40 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

direction a man who combined general business
experience and business ideas with a love for the
thing, and a natural aptness for it. He did not
want a young man, and yet he wanted youth — its
freshness, its zest — such as March would feel in a
thing he could put his whole heart into. He would
not run in ruts, like an old fellow who had got hack-
neyed ; he would not have any hobbies ; he would
not have any friends nor any enemies. Besides, he
would have to meet people, and March was a man
that people took to ; she knew that herself ; he had
a kind of charm. The editorial management was
going to be kept in the background, as far as the
public was concerned; the public was to suppose that
the thing ran itself. Fulkerson did not care for a
great literary reputation in his editor — he implied
that March had a very pretty little one. At the
same time the relations between the contributors
and the management were to be much more inti-
mate than usual. Fulkerson felt his personal dis-
qualification for working the thing socially, and he
counted upon Mr. March for that ; that was to say,
he counted upon Mrs. March.

She protested he must not count upon her ; but it
by no means disabled Fulkerson 's judgment in her
view that March really seemed more than anything
else a fancy of his. He had been a fancy of hers ;
and the sort of affectionate respect with which Ful-
kerson spoke of him laid for ever some doubt she had
of the fineness of Fulkerson's manners, and recon-
ciled her to the graphic slanginess of his speech.

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 41

The affair was now irretrievable, but she gave
her approval to it as superbly as if it were submitted
in its inception. Only, Mr. Fulkerson must not sup-
pose she should ever like New York. She would
not deceive him on that point. She never should
like it. She did not conceal, either, that she did
not like taking the children out of the Friday even-
ing class ; and she did not believe that Tom would
ever be reconciled to going to Columbia. She took
courage from Fulkerson's suggestion that it was pos-
sible for Tom to come to Harvard even from New
York ; and she heaped him with questions concern-
ing the domiciliation of the family in that city. He
tried to know something about the matter, and he
succeeded in seeming interested in points necessarily
indifferent to him.

VL

IN the uprooting and transplanting of their home
that followed, Mrs. March often trembled before
distant problems and possible contingencies, but she
was never troubled by present difficulties. She kept
up with tireless energy ; and in the moments of de-
jection and misgiving which harassed her husband
she remained dauntless, and put heart into him when
he had lost it altogether.

She arranged to leave the children in the house
with the servants, while she went on with March to
look up a dwelling of some sort in New York. It
made him sick to think of it ; and when it came to
the point, he would rather have given up the whole
enterprise. She had to nerve him to it, to repre-
sent more than once that now they had no choice
but to make this experiment. Every detail of part-
ing was anguish to him. He got consolation out of
the notion of letting the house furnished for the
winter ; that implied their return to it ; but it cost
him pangs of the keenest misery to advertise it ; and
when a tenant was actually found, it was all he
could do to give him the lease. He tried his wife's
love and patience as a man must to whom the future

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 43

is easy in the mass, but terrible as it translates itself
piecemeal into the present. He experienced remorse
in the presence of inanimate things he was going to
leave as if they had sensibly reproached him, and an
anticipative homesickness that seemed to stop his
heart. Again and again his wife had to make him
reflect that his depression was not prophetic. She
convinced him of what he already knew ; and per-
suaded him against his knowledge that he could be
keeping an eye out for something to take hold of in
Boston if they could not stand New York. She
ended by telling him that it was too bad to make
her comfort him in a trial that was really so much
more a trial to her. She had to support him in a
last access of despair on their way to the Albany
depot the morning they started to New York ; but
when the final details had been dealt with, the
tickets bought, the trunks checked, and the hand-
bags hung up in their car, and the future had massed
itself again at a safe distance and was seven hours
and two hundred miles away, his spirits began to
rise and hers to sink. He would have been willing
to celebrate the taste, the domestic refinement of the
ladies' Avaiting-room in the depot, where they had
spent a quarter of an hour before the train started.
He said he did not believe there was another station
in the world where mahogany rocking-chairs were pro-
vided ; that the dull red warmth of the walls was as
cosey as an evening-lamp, and that he always hoped
to see a fire kindled on that vast hearth, and under
that aesthetic mantel, but he supposed now he never

44 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

should. He said it was all very different from tnat
tunnel, the old Albany depot, where they had waited
the morning they went to New York when they
were starting on their wedding journey.

" The morning, Basil ! " cried his wife. " We went
at night ; and we were going to take the boat, but
it stormed so ! " She gave him a glance of such
reproach that he could not answer anything, and
now she asked him whether he supposed their cook
and second girl would be contented with one of those
dark holes where they put girls to sleep in New
York flats, and what she should do if Margaret,
especially, left her. He ventured to suggest that
Margaret would probably like the city ; but if she
left, there were plenty of other girls to be had in
New York. She replied that there were none she
could trust, and that she knew Margaret would not
stay. He asked her why she took her, then ; why

he did not give her up at once ; and she answered
that it would he inhuman to give her up just in the
edge of the winter. She had promised to keep her ;
and Margaret was pleased with the notion of going to
New York, where she had a cousin.

" Then perhaps she '11 be pleased with the notion
of staying," he said.

" Oh, much you know about it ! " she retorted ;
and in view of the hypothetical difficulty and his
want of sympathy, she fell into a gloom, from which
she roused herself at last by declaring that if there
was nothing else in the flat they took, there should

be a light kitchen and a bright sunny bedroom for

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 45

Margaret. He expressed the belief that they could
easily find such a flat as that, and she denounced his
fatal optimism, which buoyed him up in the absence
of an undertaking, and let him drop into the depths
of despair in its presence.

He owned this defect of temperament, but he said
that it compensated the opposite in her character.
" I suppose that 's one of the chief uses of marriage ;
people supplement each other, and form a pretty
fair sort of human being together. The only draw-
back to the theory is that unmarried people seem
each as complete and whole as a married pair."

She refused to be amused ; she turned her face to
the window and put her handkerchief up under her
veil.

It was not till the dining-car was attached to their
train that they were both able to escape for an hour
into the care-free mood of their earlier travels, when
they were so easily taken out of themselves. The
time had been when they could have found enough
in the conjectural fortunes and characters of their
fellow-passengers to occupy them. This phase of
their youth had lasted long, and the world was still
full of novelty and interest for them; but it re-
quired all the charm of the dining-car now to lay
the anxieties that beset them. It was so potent for
the moment, however, that they could take an objec-
tive view at their sitting cosily down there together,
as if they had only themselves in the world. They
wondered Avhat the children were doing, the chil-
dren who possessed them so intensely when present,

46 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

and now, by a fantastic operation of absence, seemed
almost non-existent. They tried to be homesick for
them, but failed ; they recognised with comfortable
self-abhorrence that this was terrible, but owned a
fascination in being alone ; at the same time they
could not imagine how people felt who never had
any children. They contrasted the luxury of din-
ing that way, with every advantage except a band
of music, and the old way of rushing out to snatch
a fearful joy at the lunch-counters of the Worcester
and Springfield and New Haven stations. They
had not gone often to New York since their wed-
ding journey, but they had gone often enough to
have noted the change from the lunch-counter to
the lunch-basket brought in the train, from which
you could subsist with more ease and dignity, but
seemed destined to a superabundance of pickles,
whatever you ordered.

They thought well of themselves now that they
could be both critical and tolerant of flavours not
very sharply distinguished from one another in
their dinner, and they lingered over their coffee
and watched the autumn landscape through the
windows.

" Not quite so loud a pattern of calico this year,"
he said, with patronising forbearance toward the
painted woodlands whirling by. "Do you see how
the foreground next the train rushes from us
and the background keeps ahead of us, while the
middle distance seems stationary 1 I don't think I
ever noticed that effect before. There ought to be

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 47

something literary in it : retreating past and advanc-
ing future, and deceitfully permanent present:
something like that 1 "

His wife brushed some crumbs from her lap
before rising. "Yes. You mustn't waste any of
these ideas now."

" Oh no ; it would be money out of Fulkerson's
pocket."

VII.

THEY vent to a quiet hotel far down-town, and
took a small apartment which they thought they
could easily afford for the day or two they need
spend in looking up a furnished flat. They were
used to staying at this hotel when they came on for
a little outing in New York, after some rigid winter
in Boston, at the time of the spring exhibitions.
They were remembered there from year to year ;
the coloured call-boys, who never seemed to get any
older, smiled upon them, and the clerk called March,
by name even before he registered. He asked if
Mrs. March were with him, and said then he sup-
posed they would want their usual quarters ; and in
a moment they were domesticated in a far interior
that seemed to have been waiting for them in a
clean, quiet, patient disoccupation ever since they
left it two years before. The little parlour, with its
gilt paper and ebo.iised furniture, was the lightest
of the rooms, but it was not very light at noonday
without the gas, which the bell-boy now flared up
for them. The uproar of the city came to it in a
soothing murmur, and they took possession of its
peace and comfort with open celebration. After all*

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 49

they agreed, there teas no place in the world so de-
lightful as a hotel apartment like that ; the boasted
charms of home were nothing to it ; and then the
magic of its heing always there, ready for any one,
every one, just as if it were for some one alone : it
was like the experience of an Arabian Nights hero
come true for all the race.

" Oh, why can't we always stay here, just we two ! "
Mrs. March sighed to her husband, as he came out
of his room rubbing his face red with the towel,
while she studied a new arrangement of her bonnet
and hand-bag on the mantel.

" And ignore the past 1 I 'm willing. I 've no
doubt that the children could get on perfectly well
without us, and could find some lot in the scheme of
Providence that would really be just as well for
them."

" Yes ; or could contrive somehow never to have
existed. I should insist upon that. If they are,
don't you see that we couldn't wish them not to be ? "

" Oh yes ; I see your point ; it 's simply incon-
trovertible."

She laughed, and said : " Well, at any rate, if we
can't find a flat to suit us we can all crowd into
these three rooms somehow, for the winter, and
then browse about for meals. By the week we
could get them much cheaper; and we could save
on the eating, as they do in Europe. Or on some-
thing else."

" Something else, probably," said March. " But
we won't take this apartment till the ideal furnished
VOL. I.— 3

50 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

flat winks out altogether. We shall not have any
trouble. We can easily find some one who is going
South for the winter, and will be glad to give up
their flat ' to the right party ' at a nominal rent.
That's my notion. That's what the Evanses did
one winter when they came on here in February.
All but the nominality of the rent."

" Yes, and we could pay a very good rent and
still save something on letting our house. You can
settle yourselves in a hundred different ways in New
York, that is one merit of the place. But if every-
thing else fails, we can come back to this. I want
you to take the refusal of it, Basil. And we '11 com-
mence looking this very evening as soon as we 've
had dinner. I cut a lot of things out of the Herald
as we came on. See here ! "

She took a long strip of paper out of her hand-
bag with minute advertisements pinned transversely
upon it, and forming the effect of some glittering
nondescript vertebrate.

"Looks something like the sea-serpent," said
March, drying his hands on the towel, while he
glanced up and down the list. "But we shan't
have any trouble. I 've no doubt there are half a
dozen things there that will do. You haven't gone
up-town ? Because we must be near the Every Other
Week office."

" No ; but I wish Mr. Fulkerson hadn't called it
that ! It always makes one think of ' jam yesterday
and jam to-morrow, but never jam to-day,' in Through
the Looking-glass. They 're all in this region."

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 51

They were still at their table, beside a low window,
where some sort of never-blooming shrub symme-
trically balanced itself in a large pot, with a leaf to
the right and a leaf to the left and a spear up
the middle, when Fulkerson came stepping square-
footedly over the thick dining-room carpet. Ho
wagged in the air a gay hand of salutation at sight
of them, and of repression when they offered to rise
to meet him ; then, with an apparent simultaneity
of action he gave a hand to each, pulled up a chair
from the next table, put his hat and stick on the
floor beside it, and seated himself.

" Well, you 've burnt your ships behind you, sure
enough," he said, beaming his satisfaction upon
them from eyes and teeth.

" The ships are burnt," said March, " though I 'm
not sure we did it alone. But here we are, looking
for shelter, and a little anxious about the disposition
of the natives."

"Oh, they're an awful peaceable lot," said Ful-
kerson. " I 've been round amongst the caciques a
little, and I think I 've got two or three places that
will just suit you, Mrs. March. How did you leave
the children ? "

" Oh, how kind of you ! Very well, and very
proud to be left in charge of the smoking wrecks."

Fulkerson naturally paid no attention to what she
said, being but secondarily interested in the chil-
dren at the best. " Here are some things right in
this neighbourhood, within gunshot of the office,
and if you want you can go and look at them to-

52 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

night ; the agents gave me houses where the people
would be in."

" We will go and look at them instantly," said
Mrs. March. "Or, as soon as you've had coffee
with us."

" Never do," Fulkerson replied. He gathered up
his hat and stick. " Just rushed in to say Hello,
and got to run right away again. I tell you, March,
things are humming. I 'm after those fellows with
a sharp stick all the while to keep them from
loafing on my house, and at the same time I 'm just
bubbling over with ideas about The Lone Hand —
wish we could call it that ! — that I want to talk up
with you."

" Well, come to breakfast," said Mrs. March cor-
dially.

" No ; the ideas will keep till you Ve secured
your lodge in this vast wilderness. Good-bye."

" You 're as nice as you can be, Mr. Fulkerson,"
she said, " to keep us in mind when you have so
much to occupy you."

" I wouldn't have anything to occupy me if I
hadn't kept you in mind, Mrs. March," said Ful-
kerson, going off upon as good a speech as he could
apparently hope to make.

"Why, Basil," said Mrs. March, when he was
gone, " he 's charming ! But now we mustn't lose
an instant. Let 's see where the places are." She
ran over the half-dozen agents' permits. "Capital
— first-rate — the very thing — every one. Well, I
consider ourselves settled ! We can go back to the
children to-morrow if we like, though I rather think

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 53

I should like to stay over another day and get a
little rested for the final pulling up that's got to
come. But this simplifies everything enormously,
and Mr. Fulkerson is as thoughtful and as sweet as
he can be. I know you will get on well with him.
He has such a good heart. And his attitude toward
you, Basil, is beautiful always — so respectful ; or not
that so much as appreciative. Yes, appreciative—
that 's the word ; I must always keep that in mind."

" It 's quite important to do so," said March.

" Yes," she assented seriously, " and we must not
forget just what kind of flat we are going to look
for. The sine qua nons are an elevator and steam-
heat, not above the third floor, to begin with. Then
we must each have a room, and you must have your
study and I must have my parlour ; and the two girls
must each have a room. With the kitchen and
dining-room, how many does that make 1 "

"Ten."

"I thought eight. Well, no matter. You can
work in the parlour, and run into your bedroom when
anybody comes ; and I can sit' in mine, and the girls
must put up with one, if it 's large and sunny, though
I Ve always given them two at home. And the
kitchen must be sunny, so they can sit in it. And
the rooms must all have outside light. And the
rent must not be over eight hundred for the winter.
We only get a thousand for our whole house, and
we must save something out of that, so as to cover
the expenses of moving. Now, do you think you
can remember all that ? "

" Not the half of it," said March. " But you can ;

54 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

or if you forget a third of it, I can come in with my
partial half, and more than make it up."

She had brought her bonnet and sack downstairs
with her, and was transferring them from the hat-
rack to her person while she talked. The friendly
door-boy let them into the street, and the clear
October evening air inspirited her so, that as she
tucked her hand under her husband's arm and began
to pull him along, she said, " If we find something
right away — and we 're just as likely to get the right
flat soon as late ; it 's all a lottery — we '11 go to the
theatre somewhere."

She had a moment's panic about having left the
agents' permits on the table, and after remembering
that she had put them into her little shopping-bag,
where she kept her money (each note crushed into
a round wad), and had left that on the hat-rack,
where it would certainly be stolen, she found it on
her wrist. She did not think that very funny, but
after a first impulse to inculpate her husband, she
let him laugh, while they stopped under a lamp, and
she held the permits half a yard away to read the
numbers on them.

" Where are your glasses, Isabel ? "
" On the mantel in our room, of course."
" Then you ought to have brought a pair of tongs."
" I wouldn't get off second-hand jokes, Basil," she
said ; and " Why, here ! " she cried, whirling round
to the door before which they had halted, " this is
the very number. Well, I do believe it 's a sign ! "
One of those coloured men who soften the trade of

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 55

janitor in many of the smaller apartment houses in
New York by the sweetness of their race, let the
Marches in, or, rather, welcomed them to the pos-
session of the premises by the bow with which he
acknowledged their permit. It was a large, old
mansion cut up into five or six dwellings, but it had
kept some traits of its former dignity, which pleased
people of their sympathetic tastes. The dark
mahogany trim, of sufficiently ugly design, gave a
rich gloom to the hallway, which was wide, and
paved with marble ; the carpeted stairs curved aloffc
through a generous space.

" There is no elevator ? " Mrs. March asked of the
janitor.

He answered, " No, ma'am ; only two flights up,"
so winningly that she said —

" Oh ! " in courteous apology, and whispered her
husband as she followed lightly up, " We '11 take it,
Basil, if it 's like the rest. "

" If it 's like him, you mean."

" I don't wonder they wanted to own them," she
hurriedly philosophised. " If I had such a creature,
nothing but death should part us, and I should no
more think of giving him his freedom \ "

"No; we couldn't afford it," returned her husband.

The apartment the janitor unlocked for them, and
lit up from those chandeliers and brackets of gilt
brass in the form of vine bunches, leaves, and ten-
drils in which the early gas-fitter realised most of his
conceptions of beauty, had rather more of the ugliness
than the dignity of the hall. But the rooms were
E

56 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

large, and they grouped themselves in a reminiscence
of the time when they were part of a dwelling, that
had its charm, its pathos, its impressiveness. Where
they were cut up into smaller spaces, it had been
done with the frankness with which a proud old
family of fallen fortunes practises its economies.
The rough pine floors showed a black border of tack-
heads where carpets had been lifted and put down
for generations ; the white paint was yellow with
age ; the apartment had light at the front and at the
back, and two or three rooms had glimpses of the
day through small windows let into their corners ;
another one seemed lifting an appealing eye to
heaven through a glass circle in its ceiling ; the rest
must darkle in perpetual twilight. Yet something
pleased in it all, and Mrs. March had gone far to
adapt the different rooms to the members of her
family, when she suddenly thought (and for her to
think was to say), " Why, but there 's no steam-
heat ! "

"No, ma'am," the janitor admitted, "But dere 's
grates in most o' de rooms, and dere 's furnace-heat
in de halls."

"That's true," she admitted, and having placed
her family in the apartments, it was bard to get
them out again. " Could we manage 1 " she referred
to her husband.

" Why, 7 shouldn't care for the steam-heat if —
What is the rent 1 " he broke off to ask the janitor.

" Nine hundred, sir."

March concluded to his wife, "If it were furnished.

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 57

" Why, of course ! What could I have been think-
ing of 1 We 're looking for a furnished flat," she
explained to the janitor, " and this was so pleasant
and home-like, that I never thought whether it was
furnished or not."

She smiled upon the janitor, and he entered into
the joke and chuckled so amiably at her flattering
oversight on the way downstairs that she said, as
she pinched her husband's arm, " Now, if you don't
give him a quarter, I '11 never speak to you again,
Basil ! "

" I would have given half a dollar willingly to get,
you beyond his glamour," said March, when they
were safely on the pavement outside. " If it hadn't
"been for my strength of character, you 'd have taken
an unfurnished flat without heat and with no elevator,
at nine hundred a year, when you had just sworn
me to steam-heat, an elevator, furniture, and eight
hundred."

" Yes ! How could I have lost my head so com-
pletely 1 " she said, with a lenient amusement in her
aberration which she was not always able to feel in
her husband's.

" The next time a coloured janitor opens the door
to us, I '11 tell him the apartment doesn't suit at the
threshold. It 's the only way to manage you, Isabel."

" It 's true. I am in love with the whole race. I
never saw one of them that didn't have perfectly
angelic manners. I think we shall all be black in
heaven — that is, black-souled. "

" That isn't the usual theory," said March.
3*

58 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

" Well, perhaps not," she assented. " Where are
we going now 1 Oh yes, to the Xenophon ! "

She pulled him gaily along again, and after they
had walked a block down and half a block over,
they stood before the apartment-house of that name,
which was cut on the gas lamps on either side of the
heavily spiked, aesthetic-hinged black door. The
titter of an electric bell brought a large, fat Buttons,
with a stage effect of being dressed to look small,
who said he would call the janitor, and they waited
in the dimly splendid, copper-coloured interior, admir-
ing the whorls and waves into which the wall-paint
was combed, till the janitor came in his gold-banded
cap, like a continental porlier. When they said they
would like to see Mrs. Grosvenor Green's apartment
he owned his inability to cope with the affair, and
said he must send for the Superintendent ; he was
either in the Herodotus or the Thucydides, and
would be there in a minute. The Buttons brought
him — a Yankee of browbeating presence in plain
clothes — almost before they had time to exchange a
frightened whisper in recognition of the fact that
there could be no doubt of the steam-heat and
elevator in this case. Half stifled in the one, they
mounted in the other eight stories, while they tried
to fceep their self-respect under the gaze of the
Superintendent, which they felt was classing and
assessing them with unfriendly accuracy. They
could not, and they faltered abashed at the threshold
of Mrs. Grosvenor Green's apartment, while the
Superintendent lit the gas in the gangway that he

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 59

called a private hall, and in the drawing-room and
the succession of chambers stretching rearward to
the kitchen. Everything had been done by the
architect to save space, and everything to waste it
by Mrs. Grosvenor Green. She had conformed to a
law for the necessity of turning round in each room,
and had folding-beds in the chambers ; but there her
subordination had ended, and wherever you might
have turned round she had put a gimcrack so that
you would knock it over if you did turn. The place
was rather pretty and even imposing at first glance,
and it took several joint ballots for March and his
wife to make sure that with the kitchen there were
only six rooms. At every door hung a portiere
from large rings on a brass rod ; every shelf and
dressing-case and mantel was littered with gim-
cracks, and the corners of the tiny rooms were
curtained off, and behind these portieres swarmed
more gimcracks. The front of the upright piano
had what March called a short-skirted portiere on
it, and the top was covered with vases, with dragon
candlesticks, and with Jap fans, which also expanded
themselves bat-wise on the walls between the etch-
ings and the water-colours. The floors were covered
with filling, and then rugs, and then skins ; the
easy-chairs all had tidies, Armenian and Turkish
and Persian ; the lounges and sofas had embroidered
cushions hidden under tidies. The radiator was
concealed by a Jap screen, and over the top of this
some Arab scarfs were flung. There was a super-
abundance of clocks. China pugs guarded the

60 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

hearth ; a brass sunflower smiled from the top of
either andiron, and a brass peacock spread its tail
before them inside a high filigree fender ; on one
side was a coal-hod in repoussd brass, and on the
other a wrought-iron wood-basket. Some red Japan-
ese bird-kites were stuck about in the necks of
spelter vases, a crimson Jap umbrella hung opened
beneath the chandelier, and each globe had a shade
of yellow silk.

March, when he had recovered his self-command
a little in the presence of the agglomeration, com-
forted himself by calling the bric-a-brac Jamescracks,
as if this was their full name.

The disrespect he was able to show the whole
apartment by means of this joke strengthened him
to say boldly to the Superintendent that it was
altogether too small ; then he asked carelessly what
the rent was.

" Two hundred and fifty."

The Marches gave a start, and looked at each other.

" Don't you think we could make it do 1 " she
asked him, and he could see that she had mentally
saved five hundred dollars as the difference between
the rent of their house and that of this flat. " It has
some very pretty features, and we could manage to
squeeze in, couldn't we ? "

" You won't find another furnished flat like it for
no two fifty a month in the whole city," the Superin-
tendent put in.

They exchanged glances again, and March said
carelessly, "It's too small."

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 61

" There 's a vacant flat in the Herodotus for
eighteen hundred a year, and one in the Thucydides
for fifteen," the Superintendent suggested, clicking
his keys together as they sank down in the elevator ;
" seven rooms and a bath."

"Thank you," said March, "we're looking for a
•furnished flat."

They felt that the Superintendent parted from
them with repressed sarcasm.

" O Basil, do you think we really made him think
it was the smallness and not the dearness ? "

" No, but we saved our self-respect in the attempt ;
and that's a great deal."

" Of course, I wouldn't have taken it, anyway, with
only six rooms, and so high up. But what prices !
Now, we must be very circumspect about the next
place."

It was a janitress, large, fat, with her arms wound
up in her apron, who received them there. Mrs.
March gave her a succinct but perfect statement of
their needs. She failed to grasp the nature of them,
or feigned to do so. She shook her head, and said
that her son would show them the flat. There was
a radiator visible in the narrow hall, and Isabel
tacitly compromised on steam-heat without an ele-
vator, as the flat was only one flight up. When the
son appeared from below with a small kerosene
hand-lamp, it appeared that the flat was unfur-
nished, but there was no stopping him till he had
shown it in all its impossibility. When they got
safely away from it and into the street March said,

62 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

" Well, have you had enough for to-night, Isabel 1
Shall we go to the theatre now ? "

"Not on any account. I want to see the whole
list of flats that Mr. Fulkerson thought would be
the very thing for us." She laughed, but with a
certain bitterness.

" You '11 be calling him my Mr. Fulkerson next,
Isabel."

" Oh no ! "

The fourth address was a furnished flat without
a kitchen, in a house with a general restaurant.
The fifth was a furnished house. At the sixth a
pathetic widow and her pretty daughter wanted
to take a family to board, and would give them a
private table at a rate which the Marches would
have thought low in Boston.

Mrs. March came away tingling with compassion
for their evident anxisty, and this pity naturally
soured into a sense of injury. " Well, I must say I
have completely lost confidence in Mr. Fulkerson's
judgment. Anything more utterly different from
what I told him we wanted I couldn't imagine. If
he doesn't manage any better about his business
than he has done about this, it will be a perfect
failure."

" Well, well, let 's hope he '11 be more circumspect
about that," her husband returned, with ironical
propitiation. " But I don't think it 's Fulkerson's
fault altogether. Perhaps it's the house-agents'.
They're a very illusory generation. There seems
to be something in the human habitation that cor-

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 63

rupts the natures of those who deal in it, to buy
or sell it, to hire or let it. You go to an agent
and tell him what kind of a house you want. He
has no such house, and he sends you to look at
something altogether different, upon the well-ascer-
tained principle that if you can't get what you want,
you will take what you can get. You don't sup-
pose the ' party ' that took our house in Boston was
looking for any such house ? He was looking for a
totally different kind of house in another part of the
town."

" I don't believe that ! " his wife broke in.

" Well, no matter. But see what a scandalous
rent you asked for it."

" We didn't get much more than half ; and, be-
sides, the agent told me to ask fourteen hundred."

" Oh, I 'm not blaming you, Isabel. I 'm only
analysing the house-agent, and exonerating Fulker-
son."

" Well, I don't believe he told them just what we
wanted ; and at any rate, I 'm done with agents.
To-morrow, I 'm going entirely by advertisements."

VIII.

MRS. MARCH took the vertebrate with her to the
Vienna Coffee-house, where they went to breakfast
next morning. She made March buy her the
Herald and the fVorld, and she added to its spiny
convolutions from them. She read the new adver-
tisements aloud with ardour and with faith to believe
that the apartments described in them were every
one truthfully represented, and that any one of them
was richly responsive to their needs. "Elegant,
light, large, single, and outside flats " were offered
with " all improvements — bath, ice-box, etc." — for
$25 and $30 a month. The cheapness was amazing.
The Wagram, the Esmeralda, the Jacinth, advertised
them for $40 and 860, "with steam-heat and eleva-
tor," rent free till November. Others, attractive
from their air of conscientious scruple, announced
" first-class flats; good order ; reasonable rents." The
Helena asked the reader if she had seen the " cabinet
finish, hard-wood floors, and frescoed ceilings" of its
$50 flats ; the Asteroid affirmed that such apart-
ments, with " six light rooms and bath, porcelain
wash-tubs, electric bells, and hall-boy," as it offered
for $75 were unapproached by competition. There

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 65

was a sameness in the jargon which tended to con-
fusion. Mrs. March got several flats on her list
which promised neither steam-heat nor elevators ;
she forgot herself so far as to include two or three
as remote from the down-town region of her choice
as Harlem. But after she had rejected these the
nondescript vertebrate was still voluminous enough
to sustain her buoyant hopes.

The waiter, who remembered them from year to
year, had put them at a window giving a pretty good
section of Broadway, and before they set out on
their search they had a moment of reminiscence.
They recalled the Broadway of five, of ten, of twenty
years ago, swelling and roaring with a tide of gaily
painted omnibuses and of picturesque traffic that the
horse-cars have now banished from it. The grind of
their wheels and the clash of their harsh bells im-
perfectly fill the silence that the omnibuses have left,
and the eye misses the tumultuous perspective of
former times.

They went out and stood for a moment before
Grace Church, and looked down the stately thorough-
fare, and found it no longer impressive, no longer
characteristic. It is still Broadway in name, but now
it is like any other street. You do not now take
your life in your hand when you attempt to cross it ;
the Broadway policeman who supported the elbow
of timorous beauty in the hollow of his cotton-gloved
palm and guided its little fearful boots over the
crossing, while he arrested the billowy omnibuses on
either side with an imperious glance, is gone, and all

66 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

that certain processional, barbaric gaiety of the place
is gone.

" Palmyra, Baalbec, Timour of the Desert," said
March, voicing their common feeling of the change.

They turned and went into the beautiful church,
and found themselves in time for the matin service.
Rapt far from New York, if not from earth, in the
dim richness of the painted light, the hallowed music
took them with solemn ecstasy ; the aerial, aspiring
Gothic forms seemed to lift them heavenward. They
came out, reluctant, into the dazzle and bustle of the
street, with a feeling that they were too good for it,
which they confessed to each other with whimsical
consciousness.

" But no matter how consecrated we feel now," he
said, "we mustn't forget that we went into the
church for precisely the same reason that we went
to the Vienna Cafe for breakfast — to gratify an
aesthetic sense, to renew the faded pleasure of travel
for a moment, to get back into the Europe of our
youth. It was a purely Pagan impulse, Isabel, and
we 'd better own it."

" I don't know," she returned. " I think we re-
duce ourselves to the bare bones too much. I wish
we didn't always recognise the facts as we do. Some-
times I should like to blink them. I should like to
think I was devouter than I am, and younger and
prettier."

' Better not ; you couldn't keep it up. Honesty
is the best policy even in such things."

" Xo ; I don't like it, Basil. I should rather wait

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 67

till the last day for some of my motives to come to
the top. I know they 're always mixed, but do let
me give them the benefit of a doubt sometimes."

" Well, well, have it your own way, my dear.
But I prefer not to lay up so many disagreeable sur-
prises for myself at that time."

She would not consent. " I know I am a good deal
younger than I was. I feel quite in the mood of
that morning when we walked down Broadway on
our wedding journey. Don't you ? "

" Oh yes. But I know I 'm not younger ; I 'm
only prettier."

She laughed for pleasure in his joke, and also for
unconscious joy in the gay New York weather, in
which there was no arribre pensde of the east wind.
They had crossed Broadway, and were walking over -
to Washington Square, in the region of which they
now hoped to place themselves. The primo tenore
statue of Garibaldi had already taken possession of
the place in the name of Latin progress, and they
met Italian faces, French faces, Spanish faces, as they
strolled over the asphalte walks, under the thinning
shadows of the autumn-stricken sycamores. They
met the familiar picturesque raggedness of southern
Europe with the old kindly illusion that somehow
it existed for their appreciation, and that it found
adequate compensation for poverty in this. March
thought he sufficiently expressed his tacit sympathy
in sitting down on one of the iron benches with his
wife, and letting a little Neapolitan put a superfluous
shine on his boots, while their desultory comment

68 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

wandered with equal esteem to the old-fashioned
American respectability which keeps the north side
of the square in vast mansions of red brick, and the
international shabbiness which has invaded the
southern border, and broken it up into lodging-
houses, shops, beer gardens, and studios.

They noticed the sign of an apartment to let on
the north side, and as soon as the little boot-black
could be bought off they went over to look at it.
The janitor met them at the door and examined
them. Then he said, as if still in doubt, "It has
ten rooms, and the rent is twenty-eight hundred
dollars."

"It wouldn't do, then," March replied, and left
him to divide the responsibility between the paucity
of the rooms and the enormity of the rent as he best
might. But their self-love had received a wound,
and they questioned each other what it was in their
appearance made him doubt their ability to pay so
much.

"Of course we don't look like New-Yorkers,"
sighed Mrs. March, " and we 've walked through
the Square. That might be as if we had walked
along the Park Street mall in the Common before
we came out on Beacon. Do you suppose he could
have seen you getting, your boots blacked in that
way ? "

" It 's useless to ask," said March. " But I never
can recover from this blow."

" Oh pshaw ! You know you hate such things
as badly as I do. It was very impertinent of him."

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 69

" Let us go back, and ^eraser I'infdme by paying
him a year's rent in advance and taking immediate
possession. Nothing else can soothe my wounded
feelings. You were not having your boots blacked :
why shouldn't he have supposed you were a New-
Yorker, and I a country cousin ? "

"They always know. Don't you remember Mrs.
Williams's going to a Fifth Avenue milliner in a
Worth dress, and the woman's asking her instantly
what hotel she should send her hat to 1 "

" Yes ; these things drive one to despair. I don't
wonder the bodies of so many genteel strangers are
found in the waters around New York. Shall we
try the south side, my dear 1 or had we better go
back to our rooms and rest a while 1 "

Mrs. March had out the vertebrate, and was con-
sulting one of its glittering ribs, and glancing up
from it at a house before which they stood. " Yes,
it 's the number ; but do they call this being ready
October 1st1?" The little area in front of the base-
ment was heaped with a mixture of mortar, bricks,
laths, and shavings from the interior ; the brown-
stone steps to the front door were similarly
bestrewn ; the doorway showed the half-open rough
pine carpenter's hatch of an unfinished house ; the
sashless windows of every story showed the activity
of workmen within ; the clatter of hammers and
the hiss of saws came out to them from every open-
ing.

" They may call it October 1st," said March, "be-
cause it 's too late to contradict them. But they 'd
F

70 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

better not call it December 1st in my presence ; I '11
let them say January 1st, at a pinch."

" AVe will go in and look at it anyway," said his
wife ; and he admired how, when she was once
within, she began provisionally to settle the family
in each of the several floors with the female instinct
for domiciliation which never failed her. She had
the help of the landlord, who was present to urge
forward the workmen apparently ; he lent a hopeful
fancy to the solution of all her questions. To get
her from under his influence March had to represent
that the place was damp from undried plastering,
and that if she stayed she would probably be down
with that New York pneumonia which visiting Bos-
tonians are always dying of. Once safely on the
pavement outside, she realised that the apartment
was not only unfinished, but unfurnished, and had
neither steam-heat nor elevator. " But I thought we
had better look at everything," she explained.

" Yes, but not take everything. If I hadn't pulled
you away from there by main force you 'd have not
only died of New York pneumonia on the spot, but
you 'd have had us all settled there before we knew
what we were about."

" Well, that 's what I can't help, Basil. It 's the
only way I can realise whether it will do for us. I
have to dramatise the whole thing."

She got a deal of pleasure as well as excitement
out of this, and he had to own that the process of
setting up house-keeping in so many different places
was not only entertaining, but tended, through as-

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 71

sociation with their first beginnings in house-keep-
ing, to restore the image of their early married
days, and to make them young again.

It went on all day, and continued far into the
night, until it was too late to go to the theatre, too
late to do anything but tumble into bed and simul-
taneously fall on sleep. They groaned over their
reiterated disappointments, but they could not deny
that the interest was unfailing, and that they got a
great deal of fun out of it all. Nothing could abate
Mrs. March's faith in her advertisements. One of
them sent her to a flat of ten rooms which promised
to be the solution of all their difficulties ; it proved
to be over a livery-stable, a liquor store, and a
milliner's shop, none of the first fashion. Another
led them far into old Greenwich Village to an
apartment-house, which she refused to enter be-
hind a small girl with a loaf of bread under one
arm and a quart can of milk under the other.

In their search they were obliged, as March com-
plained, to the acquisition of useless information in
a degree unequalled in their experience. They came
to excel in the sad knowledge of the line at which
respectability distinguishes itself from shabbiness.
Flattering advertisements took them to numbers
of huge apartment-houses chiefly distinguishable
from tenement-houses by the absence of fire-escapes
on their facades, till Mrs. March refused to stop at
any door where there were more than six bell-rat-
chets and speaking-tubes on either hand. Before
the middle of the afternoon she decided against

72 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

ratchets altogether, and confined herself to knobs,
neatly set in the door-trim. Her husband was still
sunk in the superstition that you can live anywhere
you like in New York, and he would have paused at
some places where her quicker eye caught the fatal
sign of " Modes " in the ground-floor windows. She
found that there was an east and west line beyond
which they could not go if they wished to keep their
self-respect, and that within the region to which
they had restricted themselves there was a choice of
streets. At first all the New York streets looked to
them ill-paved, dirty, and repulsive ; the general
infamy imparted itself in their casual impression to
streets in no wise guilty. But they began to notice
that some streets were quiet and clean, and, though
never so quiet and clean as Boston streets, that they
wore an air of encouraging reform, and suggested a
future of greater and greater domesticity. Whole
blocks of these down-town cross streets seemed to
have been redeemed from decay, and even in the
midst of squalor a dwelling here and there had been
seized, painted a dull-red as to its brick-work, and
a glossy black as to its wood-work, and with a bright
brass bell-pull and door knob and a large brass plate
for its key-hole escutcheon, had been endowed with
an effect of purity and pride which removed its
shabby neighbourhood far from it.

Some of these houses were quite small, and
imaginably within their means ; but, as March said,
somebody seemed always to be living there himself,
and the fact that none of them were to rent kept

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 73

Mrs. March true to her ideal of a flat. Nothing
prevented its realisation so much as its difference
from the New York ideal of a flat, which was in-
flexibly seven rooms and a bath. One or two rooms
might be at the front, the rest crooked and cornered
backward through increasing and then decreasing
darkness till they reached a light bedroom or kitchen
at the rear. It might be the one or the other, but
it was always the seventh room with the bath ; or
if, as sometimes happened, it was the eighth, it was
so after having counted the bath as one. In this
case the janitor said you always counted the bath as
one. If the flats were advertised as having "all
light rooms," he explained that any room with a
window giving into the open air of a court or shaft
was counted a light room.

The Marches tried to make out why it was that
these flats were so much more repulsive than the
apartments which every one lived in abroad ; but
they could only do so upon the supposition that
in their European days they were too young, too
happy, too full of the future, to notice whether
rooms were inside or outside, light or dark, big or
little, high or low. " Now we 're imprisoned in
the present," he said, "and we have to make the
worst of it."

In their despair he had an inspiration, which she
declared worthy of him : it was to take two small
flats, of four or five rooms and a bath, and live in
both. They tried this in a great many places ; but
they never could get two flats of the kind on the
VOL. I.— 4

74 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

same floor where there was steam-heat and an
elevator. At one place they almost did it. They
had resigned themselves to the humility of the
neighbourhood, to the prevalence of modistes and
livery-stablemen (they seem to consort much in New
York), to the garbage in the gutters and the litter
of paper in the streets, to the faltering slats in the
surrounding window-shutters and the crumbled
brown-stone steps and sills, when it turned out that
one of the apartments had been taken between two
visits they made. Then the only combination left
open to them was of a ground-floor flat to the right
and a third-floor flat to the left.

Still they kept this inspiration in reserve for use
at the first opportunity. In the meantime there
were several flats which they thought they could
almost make do : notably one where they could get
an extra servant's room in the basement four flights
down, and another where they could get it in the
roof five flights up. At the first the janitor was
respectful and enthusiastic ; at the second he had an
effect of ironical pessimism. When they trembled
on the verge of taking his apartment, he pointed out
a spot in the kalsomining of the parlour ceiling, and
gratuitously said, Now such a thing as that he should
not agree to put in shape unless they took the apart-
ment for a term of years. The apartment was
unfurnished, and they recurred to the fact that they
wanted a furnished apartment, and made their escape.
This saved them in several other extremities ; but
short of extremity they could not keep their different

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 75

requirements in mind, and were always about to
decide without regard to some one of them.

They went to several places twice without intend-
ing : once to that old-fashioned house with the
pleasant coloured janitor, and wandered all over the
apartment again with a haunting sense of familiarity,
and then recognised the janitor and laughed ; and to
that house with the pathetic widow and the pretty
daughter who wished to take them to board. They
stayed to excuse their blunder, and easily came by the
fact that the mother had taken the house that the
girl might have a home while she was in New York
studying art, and they hoped to pay their way by
taking boarders. Her daughter was at her class
now, the mother concluded ; and they encouraged
her to believe that it could only be a few days till
the rest of her scheme was realised.

" I dare say we could be perfectly comfortable
there," March suggested when they had got away.
" Now if we were truly humane we would modify
our desires to meet their needs and end this sicken-
ing search, wouldn't we ? "

" Yes, but we 're not truly humane," his wife
answered, "or at least not in that sense. You know
you hate boarding ; and if we went there I should
have them on my sympathies the whole time."

" I see. And then you would take it out of
me."

" Then I should take it out of you. And if you
are going to be so weak, Basil, and let every little
thing work upon you in that way, you 'd better not

76 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

come to New York. You'll see enough misery
here."

"Well, don't take that superior tone with me, as
if I were a child that had its mind set on an unde-
sirable toy, Isabel."

" Ah, don't you suppose it 's because you are such
a child in some respects that I like you, dear ? " she
demanded, without relenting.

" But I don't find so much misery in New York.
I don't suppose there 's any more suffering here to
the population than there is in the country. And
they 're so gay about it all. I think the outward
aspect of the place and the hilarity of the sky and
air must get into the people's blood. The weather
is simply unapproachable ; and I don't care if it is
the ugliest place in the world, as you say. I sup-
pose it is. It shrieks and yells with ugliness here
and there, but it never loses its spirits. That
widow is from the country. When she 's been a
year in New York she '11 be as gay — as gay as an L
road." He celebrated a satisfaction they both had
in the L roads. " They kill the streets and avenues,
but at least they partially hide them, and that is
some comfort ; and they do triumph over their
prostrate forms with a savage exultation that is
intoxicating. Those bends in the L that you get in
the corner of Washington Square, or just below the
Cooper Institute — they 're the gayest things in the
world. Perfectly atrocious, of course, but incom-
parably picturesque ! And the whole city is so,"
said March, "or else the L would never have got

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 77

built here. New York may be splendidly gay or
squalidly gay; but, prince or pauper, it's gay
always."

"Yes, gay is the word," she admitted, with a
sigh. " But frantic. I can't get used to it. They for-
get death, Basil ; they forget death in New York."

" Well, I don't know that I Ve ever found much
advantage in remembering it."

"Don't say such a thing, dearest."

He could see that she had got to the end of her
nervous strength for the present, and he proposed
that they should take the Elevated road as far as it
would carry them into the country, and shake off
their nightmare of flat-hunting for an hour or two ;
but her conscience would not let her. She con-
victed him of levity equal to that of the New-
Yorkers in proposing such a thing; and they
dragged through the day. She was too tired to
care for dinner, and in the night she had a dream
from which she woke herself with a cry that roused
him too. It was something about the children at
first, whom they had talked of wistfully before
falling asleep, and then it was of a hideous thing
with two square eyes and a series of sections grow-
ing darker and then lighter, till the tail of the
monstrous articulate was quite luminous again.
She shuddered at the vague description she was
able to give ; but he asked, " Did it offer to bite
you 1 "

"No. That was the most frightful thing about
it; it had no mouth."

78 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

March laughed. " Why, my dear, it was nothing
but a harmless New York flat — seven rooms and
a bath."

"I really believe it was," she consented, recog-
nising an architectural resemblance, and she fell
asleep again, and woke renewed for the work before
them.

IX.

THEIR house-hunting no longer had novelty, but
it still had interest ; and they varied their- day by
taking a coupe", by renouncing advertisements, and
by reverting to agents. Some of these induced them
to consider the idea of furnished houses ; and Mrs.
March learned tolerance for Fulkerson by accepting
permits to visit flats and houses which had none of
the qualifications she desired in either, and were as
far beyond her means as they were out of the region
to which she had geographically restricted herself.
They looked at three-thousand and four-thousand
dollar apartments, and rejected them for one reason
or another which had nothing to do with the rent ;
the higher the rent was, the more critical they were
of the slippery inlaid floors and the arrangement of
the richly decorated rooms. They never knew
whether they had deceived the janitor or not ; as
they came in a coupe", they hoped they had.

They drove accidentally through one street that
seemed gayer in the perspective than an L road.
The fire-escapes, with their light iron balconies and
ladders of iron, decorated the lofty house fronts ;
the roadway and sidewalks and door-steps swarmed

80 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

with children; women's neads seemed to show at-
every window. In the basements, over which nights
of high stone steps led to the tenements, were green-
grocers' shops abounding in cabbages, and provision
stores running chiefly to bacon and sausages, and
cobblers' and tinners' shops, and the like, in pro-
portion to the small needs of a poor neighbourhood.
Ash barrels lined the sidewalks, and garbage heaps
filled the gutters; teams of all trades stood idly
about ; a peddler of cheap fruit urged his cart through
the street, and mixed his cry with the joyous screams
and shouts of the children and the scolding and
gossiping voices of the women ; the burly blue bulk
of a policeman defined itself at the corner ; a
drunkard zigzagged down the sidewalk toward him.
It was not the abode of the extremest poverty, but
of a poverty as hopeless as any in the world, trans-
mitting itself from generation to generation, and
establishing conditions of permanency to which
human life adjusts itself as it does to those of some
incurable disease, like leprosy.

The time had been when the Marches would have
taken a purely aesthetic view of the facts as they
glimpsed them in this street of tenement-houses ;
when they would have contented themselves with
saying that it was as picturesque as a street in
Naples or Florence, and with wondering why nobody
came to paint it ; they would have thought they
were sufficiently serious about it in blaming the
artists for their failure to appreciate it, and going-
abroad for the picturesque when they had it here

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 81

under their noses. It was to the nose that the street
made one of its strongest appeals, and Mrs. March
pulled up her window of the coupe". " Why does he
take us through such a disgusting street ? " she de-
manded, with an exasperation of which her husband
divined the origin.

" This driver may be a philanthropist in dis-
guise," he answered, with dreamy irony, " and may
want us to think about the people who are not
merely carried through this street in a coupe", but
have to spend their whole lives in it, winter and
summer, with no hopes of driving out of it, except
in a hearse. I must say they don't seem to mind
it. I haven't seen a jollier crowd anywhere in New
York. They seem to have forgotten death a little
more completely than any of their fellow-citizens,
Isabel. And I wonder what they think of us,
making this gorgeous progress through their midst.
I suppose they think we 're rich, and hate us — if
they hate rich people ; they don't look as if they
hated anybody. Should we be as patient as they
are with their discomfort ? I don't believe there 's
steam-heat or an elevator in the whole block. Seven
rooms and a bath would be more than the largest and,
genteelest family would know what to do with. They
wouldn't know what to do with the bath anyway."

His monologue seemed to interest his wife apart
from the satirical point it had for themselves. "You
ought to get Mr. Fulkerson to let you work some of
these New York sights up for Every Other Week,

Basil ; you could do them very nicely."
4.*

82 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

"Yes; I've thought of that. But don't let's
leave the personal ground. Doesn't it make you
feel rather small and otherwise unworthy when you
see the kind of street these fellow-beings of yours
live in, and then think how particular you are about
locality and the number of bell-pulls 1 I don't see
even ratchets and speaking-tubes at these doors. ;>
He craned his neck out of the window for a better
look, and the children of discomfort cheered him,
out of sheer good feeling and high spirits. " I didn't
know I was so popular. Perhaps it 's a recognition
of my humane sentiments."

" Oh, it 's very easy to have humane sentiments,
and to satirise ourselves for wanting eight rooms
and a bath in a good neighbourhood, when we see
how these wretched creatures live," said his wife.
" But if we shared all we have with them, and then
settled down among them, what good would it do ? "

" Not the least in the world. It might help us
for the moment, but it wouldn't keep the wolf from
their doors for a week ; and then they would go on
just as before, only they wouldn't be on such good
terms with the wolf. The only way for them is to
keep up an unbroken intimacy with the wolf ; then
they can manage him somehow. I don't know how,
and I 'm afraid I don't want to. Wouldn't you like
to have this fellow drive us round among the halls
of pride somewhere for a little while 1 Fifth Avenue
or Madison, up-town 1 "

" No ; we 've no time to waste. I 've got a place
near Third Avenue, on a nice cross street, and I

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 83

want him to take us there." It proved that she had
several addresses near together, and it seemed best
to dismiss their coup6 and do the rest of their after-
noon's work on foot. It came to nothing ; she was
not humbled in the least by what she had seen in
the tenement-house street ; she yielded no point in
her ideal of a flat, and the flats persistently refused
to lend themselves to it. She lost all patience with
them.

" Oh, I don't say the flats are in the right of it,"
said her husband, when she denounced their stupid
inadequacy to the purposes of a Christian home.
" But I 'm not so sure that we are either. I 've
been thinking about that home business ever since
my sensibilities were dragged — in a coup6 — through
that tenement-house street. Of course no child born
and brought up in such a place as that could have
any conception of home. But that 's because those
poor people can't give character to their habitations.
They have to take what they can get. But people
like us — that is, of our means — do give character to
the average flat. It 's made to meet their tastes, or
their supposed tastes ; and so it 's made for social
show, not for family life at all. Think of a baby in
a flat ! It 's a contradiction in terms ; the flat is
the negation of motherhood. The flat means society
life ; that is, the pretence of social life. It 's made
to give artificial people a society basis on a little
money — too much money, of course, for what they
get. So the cost of the building is put into marble
halls and idiotic decoration of all kinds. I don't

84 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

object to the conveniences, but none of these flats
have a living-room. They have drawing-rooms to
foster social pretence, and they have dining-rooms
and bedrooms ; but they have no room where the
family can all come together and feel the sweetness
of being a family. The bedrooms are black-holes
mostly, with a sinful waste of space in each. If it
were not for the marble halls, and the decorations,
and the foolishly expensive finish, the houses could
be built round a court, and the flats could be shaped
something like a Pompeiian house, with small sleep-
ing closets — only lit from the outside — and the rest
of the floor thrown into two or three large cheerful
halls, where all the family life could go on, and
society could be transacted unpretentiously. Why,
those tenements are better and humaner than those
flats ! There the whole family lives in the kitchen,
and has its consciousness of being ; but the flat
abolishes the family consciousness. It's confine-
ment without coziness ; it 's cluttered without be-
ing snug. You couldn't keep a self-respecting cat in
a flat ; you couldn't go down cellar to get cider. No :
the Anglo-Saxon home, as we know it in the Anglo-
Saxon house, is simply impossible in the Franco-
American flat, not because it 's humble, but because
it's false."

"Well, then," said Mrs. March, "let's look at
houses."

He had been denouncing the flat in the abstract,
and he had not expected this concrete result. But
he said, " We will look at houses, then."

X.

NOTHING mystifies a man more than a woman's
aberrations from some point at which he supposes
her fixed as a star. In these unfurnished houses,
without steam or elevator, March followed his wife
about with patient wonder. She rather liked the
worst of them best ; but she made him go down into
the cellars and look at the furnaces ; she exacted
from him a rigid inquest of the plumbing. She
followed him into one of the cellars by the fitful
glare of successively lighted matches, and they
enjoyed a moment in which the anomaly of their
presence there on that errand, so remote from all
the facts of their long-stablished life in Boston,
realised itself for them.

" Think how easily we might have been murdered
and nobody been any the wiser ! " she said when they
were comfortably out-doors again.

"Yes, or made way with ourselves in an access of
emotional insanity, supposed to have been induced
by unavailing flat-hunting," he suggested.

She fell in with the notion. "I'm beginning to
feel crazy. But I don 't want you to lose your head,
Basil. And I don't want you to sentimentalise any
G

86 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

of the things you see in New York. I think you
were disposed to do it in that street we drove through.
I don't believe there 's any real suffering — not real
suffering — among those people j that is, it would be
suffering from our point of view, but they Ve been
used to it all their lives, and they don't feel their
discomfort so much."

" Of course I understand that, and I don't propose
to sentimentalise them. I think when people get
used to a bad state of things they had better stick
to it ; in fact they don't usually like a better state
so well, and I shall keep that firmly in mind."

She laughed with him, and they walked along the
L-bestridden avenue, exhilarated by their escape
from murder and suicide in that cellar, toward the
nearest cross-town track, which they meant to take
home to their hotel. " Now to-night we will go to
the theatre," she said, "and get this whole house
business out of our minds, and be perfectly fresh for
a new start in the morning." Suddenly she clutched
his arm. " Why, did you see that man ? " and she
signed with her head toward a decently dressed
person who walked beside them, next the gutter,
stooping over as if to examine it, and half halting at
times.

"No. What?"

" Why, I saw him pick up a dirty bit of cracker
from the pavement and cram it into his mouth and
eat it down as if he were famished. And look ! he 's
actually hunting for more in those garbage heaps ! "

This was what the decent-looking man with the

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 87

hard hands and broken nails of a workman was
doing — like a hungry dog. They kept up with him,
in the fascination of the sight, to the next corner,
where he turned down the side street still searching
the gutter.

They walked on a few paces. Then March said,
" I must go after him," and left his wife standing.

" Are you in want — hungry 1 " he asked the
man.

The man said he could not speak English,
monsieur.

March asked his question in French.

The man shrugged a pitiful, desperate shrug,
" Mais, monsieur "

March put a coin in his hand, and then suddenly
the man's face twisted up ; he caught the hand of
this alms-giver in both of his, and clung to it.
" Monsieur ! monsieur ! " he gasped, and the tears
rained down his face.

His benefactor pulled himself away, shocked and
ashamed, as one is by such a chance, and got back
to his wife, and the man lapsed back into the
mystery of misery out of which he had emerged.

March felt it laid upon him to console his wife for
what had happened. " Of course we might live
here for years and not see another case like that ;
and of course there are twenty places where he
could have gone for help if he had known where to
find them."

"Ah, but it's the possibility of his needing the
help so badly as that!" she answered. "That's

88 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

what I can't bear, and I shall not come to a place
where such things are possible, and we may as well
stop our house-hunting here at once."

" Yes 1 And what part of Christendom will you
live in ? Such things are possible everywhere in our
conditions."

" Then we must change the conditions "

*' Oh no ; we must go to the theatre and forget
them. We can stop at Brentano's for our tickets as
we pass through Union Square."

" I am not going to the theatre, Basil. I am
going home to Boston to-night. You can stay and
find a flat,"

He convinced her of the absurdity of her position,
and even of its selfishness ; but she said that her
mind was quite made up irrespective of what had
happened ; that she had been away from the
children long enough ; that she ought to be at home
to finish up the work of leaving it. The word
brought a sigh. " Ah, I don't know why we should
see nothing but sad and ugly things now. When
we were young "

•/ O

" Younger," he put in. " We 're still young."
" That 's what we pretend, but we know better.
But I was thinking how pretty and pleasant things
used to be turning up all the time on our travels in
the old days. Why, when we were in New York
here on our wedding journey the place didn't seem
half so dirty as it does now, and none of these dis-
mal things happened."

" It was a good deal dirtier," he answered ; "and_I

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 89

fancy worse in every way — hungrier, raggeder, more
wretchedly housed. But that wasn't the period of
life for us to notice it. Don't you remember,
when we started to Niagara the last time, how
everybody seemed middle-aged and commonplace;
and when we got there there were no evident
brides ; nothing but elderly married people ] "

" At least they weren't starving," she rebelled.

" No, you don't starve in parlour cars and first-
class hotels ; but if you step out of them you run
your chance of seeing those who do, if you 're get-
ting on pretty well in the forties. If it 's the un-
happy who see unhappiness, think what misery must
be revealed to people who pass their lives in the
really squalid tenement-house streets — I don't mean
picturesque avenues like that we passed through."

" But we are not unhappy," she protested, bring-
ing the talk back to the personal base again, as
women must to get any good out of talk. " We 're
really no unhappier than we were when we were
young."

" We 're more serious."

" Well, I hate it ; and I wish you wouldn't be so
serious, if that 's what it brings us to."

"I will be trivial from this on," said March.
" Shall we go to the Hole in the Ground to-night 1 "

"I am going to Boston."

" It 's much the same thing. How do you like that
for triviality 1 It 's a little blasphemous, I '11 allow."

" It 's very silly," she said.

At the hotel they found a letter from the agent

90 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

who had sent them the permit to see Mrs. Gros-
venor Green's apartment. He wrote that she had
heard they were pleased with her apartment, and
that she thought she could make the terms to suit.
She had taken her passage for Europe, and was very
anxious to let the flat before she sailed. She would
call that evening at seven.

" Mrs. Grosvenor Green ! " said Mrs. March.
" Which of the ten thousand flats is it, Basil 1 "

11 The gimcrackery," he answered. " In the
Xenophon, you know."

" Well, she may save herself the trouble. I shall
not see her. Or yes — I must I couldn't go away
without seeing what sort of creature could have
planned that fly-away flat. She must be a perfect "

" Parachute," March suggested.

"No : anybody so light as that couldn't come down."

"Well, toy balloon."

" Toy balloon will do for the present," Mrs. March
admitted. " But I feel that naught but herself can
be her parallel for volatility."

When Mrs. Grosvenor Green's card came up they
both descended to the hotel parlour, which March
said looked like the saloon of a Moorish day-boat ;
not that he knew of any such craft, but the decora-
tions were so Saracenic and the architecture so
Hudson Riverish. They found there on the grand
central divan a large lady whose vast smoothness,
placidity, and plumpness set at defiance all their pre-
conceptions of Mrs. Grosvenor Green, so that Mrs.
March distinctly paused with her card in her hand

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 91

before venturing even tentatively to address her.
Then she was astonished at the low calm voice in
which Mrs. Green acknowledged herself, and slowly
proceeded to apologise for calling. It was not quite
true that she had taken her passage for Europe, but
she hoped soon to do so, and she confessed that in
the meantime she was anxious to let her flat. She
was a little worn out with the care of house-keeping
— Mrs. March breathed, " Oh yes ! " in the sigh with
which ladies recognise one another's martyrdom —
and Mr. Green had business abroad, and she was
going to pursue her art studies in Paris ; she drew
in Mr. Ilcomb's class now, but the instruction was
so much better in Paris ; and as the Superintendent
seemed to think the price was the only objection,
she had ventured to call.

" Then we didn't deceive him in the least,"
thought Mrs. March, while she answered sweetly :
" No ; we were only afraid that it would be too
small for our family. We require a good many
rooms." She could not forego the opportunity of
saying, "My husband is coming to New York to
take charge of a literary periodical, and he will
have to have a room to write in," which made
Mrs. Green bow to March, and made March look
sheepish. "But we did think the apartment very
charming (It icas architecturally charming," she pro-
tested to her conscience), "and we should have been
so glad if we could have got into it." She followed
this with some account of their house-hunting, amid
soft murmurs of sympathy from Mrs. Green, who

92 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

said that she had been through all that, and that if
she could have shown her apartment to them she
felt sure that she could have explained it so that
they would have seen its capabilities better. Mrs.
March assented to this, and Mrs. Green added that
if they found nothing exactly suitable she would be
glad to have them, look at it again ; and then Mrs.
March said that she was going back to Boston her-
self, but she was leaving Mr. March to continue the
search, and she had no doubt he would be only too
glad to see the apartment by daylight. " But if
you take it, Basil," she warned him, when they were
alone, " I shall simply renounce you. I wouldn't
live in that junk shop if you gave it to me. But
who would have thought she was that kind of look-
ing person ? Though of course I might have known
if I had stopped to think once. It 's because the
place doesn't express her at all that it 's so unlike
her. It couldn't be like anybody, or anything that
flies in the air, or creeps upon the earth, or swims
in the waters under the earth. I wonder where in
the world she 's from ; she 's no Xew- Yorker ; even
we can see that ; and she 's not quite a country
person either ; she seems like a person from some
large town, where she 's been an aesthetic authority.
And she can't find good enough art instruction in
New York, and has to go to Paris for it ! Well, it 's
pathetic, after all, Basil. I can't help feeling sorry
for a person who mistakes herself to that extent."
" I can't help feeling sorry for the husband of a
person who mistakes herself to that extent. What

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 93

is Mr. Grosvenor Green going to do in Paris while
she 's working her way into the Salon ? "

" Well, you keep away from her apartment, Basil ;
that 's all I 've got to say to you. And yet I do like
some things about her."

"I like everything about her but her apartment,"
said March.

" I like her going to be out of the country," said
his wife. " We shouldn't be overlooked. And the
place was prettily shaped, you can't deny it. And
there was an elevator and steam-heat. And the loca-
tion is very convenient. And there was a hall-boy
to bring up cards. The halls and stairs were kept
very clean and nice. But it wouldn't do. I could
put you a folding bed in the room where you wrote,
and we could even have one in the parlour "

" Behind a portiere 1 I couldn't stand any more
portieres ! "

"And we could squeeze the two girls into one
room, or perhaps only bring Margaret, and put out
the whole of the wash. Basil ! " she almost shrieked,
" it isn't to be thought of ! "

He retorted, " I 'm not thinking of it, my dear."

Fulkerson came in just before they started for Mrs.
March's train, to find out what had become of them,
he said, and to see whether they had got anything
to live in yet.

" Not a thing," she said. " And I 'm just going
back to Boston, and leaving Mr. March here to do
anything he pleases about it. He has carte blanche."

"But freedom brings responsibility, you know,

94 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

Fulkerson, and it 's the same as if I 'd no choice. I 'm
staying behind because I 'm left, not because I expect
to do anything."

" Is that so ] " asked Fulkerson. " Well, we must
see what can be done. I supposed you would be all
settled by this time, or I should have humped myself
to find you something. None of those places I gave
you amount to anything ? "

" As much as forty thousand others we Ve looked
at," said Mrs. March. "Yes, one of them does
amount to something. It comes so near being what
we want that I 've given Mr. March particular in-
structions not to go near it."

She told him about Mrs. Grosvenor Green and her
flats, and at the end he said —

" Well, well, we must look out for that. I '11 keep
an eye on him, Mrs. March, and see that he doesn't
do anything rash, and I won't leave him till he 's
found just the right thing. It exists, of course ; it
must in a city of eighteen hundred thousand people,
and the only question is where to find it. You leave
him to me, Mrs. March ; I '11 watch out for him."

Fulkerson showed some signs of going to the
station when he found they -\vere not driving, but
she bade him a peremptory good-bye at the hotel door.

"He's very nice, Basil, and his way with you is
perfectly charming. It 's very sweet to see how
really fond of you he is. But I didn't want him
stringing along up to Forty-second Street with us,
and spoiling our last moments together."

At Third Avenue they took the Elevated, for

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 95

which she confessed an infatuation. She declared it
the most ideal way of getting about in the world,
and was not ashamed when he reminded her of how
she used to say that nothing under the sun could
induce her to travel on it. She now said that the
night transit was even more interesting than the
day, and that the fleeting intimacy you formed with
people in second and third floor interiors, while all
the usual street life went on underneath, had a
domestic intensity mixed with a perfect repose that
was the last effect of good society with all its security
and exclusiveness. He said it was better than the
theatre, of which it reminded him, to see those
people through their windows : a family party of
work-folk at a late tea, some of the men in their
shirt sleeves ; a woman sewing by a lamp ; a mother
laying her child in its cradle ; a man with his head
fallen on his hands upon a table ; a girl and her
lover leaning over the window-sill together. What
suggestion ! what drama ! what infinite interest !
At the Forty-second Street station they stopped a
minute on the bridge that crosses the track to the
branch road for the Central Depot, and looked up
and down the long stretch of the elevated to north
and south. The track that found and lost itself a
thousand times in the flare and tremor of the innu-
merable lights ; the moony sheen of the electrics
mixing with the reddish points and blots of gas far
and near; the architectural shapes of houses and
churches and towers, rescued by the obscurity from
all that was ignoble in them, and the coming and

96 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

going of the trains marking the stations with vivider
or fainter plumes of flame-shot steam — formed an
incomparable perspective. They often talked after-
ward of the superb spectacle, which in a city full of
painters nightly works its unrecorded miracles ; and
they were just to the Arachne roof spun in iron
over the cross street on which they ran to the depot ;
but for the present they were mostly inarticulate
before it. They had another moment of rich silence
when they paused in the gallery that leads from the
elevated station to the waiting-rooms in the Central
Depot and looked down upon the great night trains
lying on the tracks dim under the rain of gas-lights
that starred without dispersing the vast darkness of
the place. What forces, what fates, slept in these
bulks which would soon be hurling themselves north
and east and west through the night ! Now they
waited there like fabled monsters of Arab story ready
for the magician's touch, tractable, reckless, will-less
— organised lifelessness full of a strange semblance
of life.

The Marches admired the impressive sight with a
thrill of patriotic pride in the fact that the whole
world perhaps could not afford just the like. Then
they hurried down to the ticket offices, and he got
her a lower berth in the Boston sleeper, a"nd went
with her to the car. They made the most of the
fact that her berth was in the very middle of the
car ; and she promised to write as soon as she reached
home. She promised also that having seen the
limitations of New York in respect to flats, she

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 97

would not be hard on him if he took something not
quite ideal Only he must remember that it was
not to be above Twentieth Street nor below Wash-
ington Square ; it must not be higher than the third
floor; it must have an elevator, steam-heat, hall-
boys, and a pleasant janitor. These were essentials ;
if he could not get them, then they must do without.
But he must get them.
VOL. L— 5

XL

MRS. MARCH was one of those wives who exact a
more rigid adherence to their ideals from their hus-
bands than from themselves. Early in their married
life she had taken charge of him in all matters which
she considered practical. She did not include the
business of bread-winning in these ; that was an
affair that might safely be left to his absent-minded,
dreamy inefficiency, and she did not interfere with
him there. But in such things as rehanging the pic-
tures, deciding on a summer boarding-place, taking a
seaside cottage, repapering rooms, choosing seats at
the theatre, seeing what the children ate when she
was not at table, shutting the cat out at night, keep-
ing run of calls and invitations, and seeing if the fur-
nace was damped, he had failed her so often that she
felt she cou'd not leave him the slightest discretion
in regard to a flat. Her total distrust of his judg-
ment in the matters cited and others like them con-
sisted with the greatest admiration of his mind and
respect for his character. She often said that if he
would only bring them to bear in such exigencies he
would be simply perfect ; but she had long given up
his ever doing so. She subjected him, therefore, to

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 99

an iron code, but after proclaiming it she was apt to
abandon him to the native lawlessness of his tem-
perament. She expected him in this event to do as
he pleased, and she resigned herself to it with con-
siderable comfort in holding him accountable. He
learned to expect this, and after suffering keenly
from her disappointment with whatever he did he
waited patiently till she forgot her grievance and
began to extract what consolation lurks in the irre-
parable. She would almost admit at moments that
what he had done was a very good thing, but she
reserved the right to return in full force to her
original condemnation of it; and she accumulated
each act of independent volition in witness and
warning against him. Their mass oppressed but
never deterred him. He expected to do the wrong
thing when left to his own devices, and he did it
without any apparent recollection of his former mis-
deeds and their consequences. There was a good
deal of comedy in it all, and some tragedy.

He now experienced a certain expansion, such as
husbands of his kind will imagine, on going back to
his hotel alone. It was, perhaps, a revulsion from
the pain of parting; and he toyed with the idea
of Mrs. Grosvenor Green's apartment, which, in its
preposterous unsuitability, had a strange attraction.
He felt that he could take it with less risk than
anything else they had seen, but he said he would
look at all the other places in town first. He really
spent the greater part of the next day in hunting up
the owner of an apartment that had neither steam-

100 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

heat nor an elevator, but was otherwise perfect, and
trying to get him to take less than the agent asked.
By a curious psychical operation he was able, in the
transaction, to work himself into quite a passionate
desire for the apartment, while he held the Gros-
venor Green apartment in the background of his
mind as something that he could return to as alto-
gether more suitable. He conducted some simul-
taneous negotiation for a furnished house, which
enhanced still more the desirability of the Grosvenor
Green apartment. Toward evening he went off at
a tangent far up-town, so as' to be able to tell his
wife how utterly preposterous the best there would
be as compared even with this ridiculous Grosvenor
Green gimcrackery. It is hard to report the pro-
cesses of his sophistication ; perhaps this, again,
may best be left to the marital imagination.

He rang at the last of these up-town apartments
as it was falling dusk, and it was long before the
janitor appeared. Then the man was very surly,
and said if he looked at the flat now he would say
it was too dark, like all the rest. His reluctance
irritated March in proportion to his insincerity in
proposing to look at it at all. He knew he did not
mean to take it under any circumstances ; that he
was going to use his inspection of it in dishonest
justification of his disobedience to his wife ; but he
put on an air of offended dignity. "If you don't
wish to show the apartment," he said, " I don't care
to see it."

The man groaned, for he was heavy, and no doubt

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 101

dreaded the stairs. He scratched a match on his
thigh, and led the way up. March was sorry for
him, and he put his fingers on a quarter in his
waistcoat-pocket to give him at parting. At the
same time, he had to trump up an objection to the
flat. This was easy, for it was advertised as con-
taining ten rooms, and he found the number eked
out with the bath-room and two large closets. " It 's
light enough," said March, "but I don't see how you
make out ten rooms."

" There 's ten rooms," said the man, deigning no
proof.

March took his fingers off the quarter, and went
downstairs and out of the door without another
word. It would be wrong, it would be impossible,
to give the man anything after such insolence. He
reflected, with shame, that it was also cheaper to
punish than forgive him.

He returned to his hotel prepared for any
desperate measure, and convinced now that the
Grosvenor Green apartment was not merely the
only thing left for him, but was, on its own merits,
the best thing in New York.

Fulkerson was waiting for him in the reading-room,
and it gave March the curious thrill with which a
man closes with temptation when he said : " Look
here ! Why don't you take that woman's flat in the
Xenophon ? She 's been at the agents again, and
they Ve been at me. She likes your look — or Mrs.
March's — and I guess you can have it at a pretty
heavy discount from the original price. I 'm author-
H

102 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

ised to say you can have it for one seventy-five a
month, and I don't believe it would be safe for you
to offer one fifty."

March shook his head, and dropped a mask of
virtuous rejection over his corrupt acquiescence.
" It 's too small for us — we couldn't squeeze into it."

" Why, look here ! " Fulkerson persisted. " How
many rooms do you people want ? "

" I 've got to have a place to work "

" Of course ! And you Ve got to have it at the
Fifth Wheel office."

"I hadn't thought of that," March began. "I
suppose I could do my work at the office, as there 's
not much writing "

" Why, of course you can't do your work at home.
You just come round with me now, and look at that
flat again."

"No; I can't do it."

"Why?"

" I— I Ve got to dine."

" All right," said Fulkerson. " Dine with me. I
want to take you round to a little Italian place that
I know." .

One may trace the successive steps of March's
descent in this simple matter with the same edifica-
tion that would attend the study of the self-delusions
and obfuscations of a man tempted to crime. The
process is probably not at all different, and to the
philosophical mind the kind of result is unimpor-
tant ; the process is everything.

Fulkerson led him down one block and half

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 103

across another to the steps of a small dwelling-house,
transformed, like many others, into a restaurant
of the Latin ideal, with little or no structural
change from the pattern of the lower middle-class
New York home. There were the corroded brown-
stone steps, the mean little front door, and the
cramped entry with its narrow stairs by which
ladies could go up to a dining-room appointed for
them on the second floor ; the parlours on the first
were set about with tables, where men smoked
cigarettes between the courses, and a single waiter
ran swiftly to and fro with plates and dishes, and
exchanged unintelligible outcries with a cook be-
yond a slide in the back parlour. He rushed at the
new-comers, brushed the soiled table-cloth? before
them with a towel on his arm, covered its worst
stains with a napkin, and brought them, in their
order, the vermicelli soup, the fried fish, the cheese-
strewn spaghetti, the veal cutlets, the tepid roast
fowl and salad, and the wizened pear and coffee
which form the dinner at such places.

" Ah, this is nice ! " said Fulkerson, after the
laying of the charitable napkin, and he began to
recognise acquaintances, some of whom he described
to March as young literary men and artists with
whom they should probably have to do ; others
were simply frequenters of the place, and were of
all nationalities and religions apparently — at least,
several were Hebrews and Cubans. "You get a
pretty good slice of New York here," he said, " all
except the frosting on top. That you Avon't find

104 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

much at Maroni's, though you will occasionally. I
don't mean the ladies ever, of course." The ladies
present seemed harmless and reputable looking
people enough, but certainly they were not of the
first fashion, and, except in a few instances, not
Americans. " It 's like cutting straight down
through a fruit-cake," Fulkerson went on, " or a
mince-pie, when you don't know who made the pie ;
you get a little of everything." He ordered a small
flask of Chianti with the dinner, and it came in
its pretty wicker jacket. March smiled upon it
with tender reminiscence, and Fulkerson laughed.
" Lights you up a little. I brought old Dryfoos
here one day, and he thought it was sweet-oil j
that 's the kind of bottle they used to have it in at
the country drug-stores."

" Yes, I remember now ; but I M totally forgotten
it," said March. " How far back that goes ! Who 's
Dryfoos ? "

" Dryfoos ? " Fulkerson, still smiling, tore off a
piece of the half-yard of French loaf which had been
supplied them, with two pale, thin disks of butter,
and fed it into himself. "Old Dryfoos ] Well, of
course ! I call him old, but he ain't so very.
About fifty, or along there."

" No," said March, " that isn't very old — or not
so old as it used to be."

"Well, I suppose you've got to know about him,
anyway," said Fulkerson thoughtfully. " And I 've
been wondering just how I should tell you. Can't
always make out exactly how much of a Bostonian

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 105

you really are ! Ever been out in the natural gas
c6uritry ? "

" No," said March. " I 've had a good deal of
curiosity about it, but I Ve never been able to get
away except in summer, and then we always pre-
ferred to go over the old ground, out to Niagara
and back through Canada, the route we took on our
wedding journey. The children like it as much as
we do."

" Yes, yes," said Fulkerson. " Well, the natural
gas country is worth seeing. I don't mean the
Pittsburg gas-fields, but out in Northern Ohio and
Indiana around Moffitt — that 's the place in the
heart of the gas region that they Ve been booming
so. Yes, you ought to see that country. If you
haven't been West for a good many years, you
haven't got any idea how old the country looks.
You remember how the fields used to be all full of
stumps ? "

"I should think so."

" Well, you won't see any stumps now. All that
country out around Moffitt is just as smooth as a
checker-board, and looks as old as England. You
know how we used to burn the stumps out ; and
then somebody invented a stump-extracter, and we
pulled them out with a yoke of oxen. Now they
just touch 'em off with a little dynamite, and they Ve
got a cellar dug and filled up with kindling ready
for house-keeping whenever you want it. Only
they haven't got any use for kindling in that country
— all gas. I rode along on the cars through those
5*

106 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

level black fields at corn-planting time, and every
once in a while I'd come to a place with a piece *of
ragged old stove-pipe stickin' up out of the ground,
and blazing away like forty, and a fellow ploughing
all round it and not minding it any more than if it
was spring violets. Horses didn't notice it, either.
Well, they Ve always known about the gas out there ;
they say there are places in the woods where it 's
been burning ever since the country was settled.

" But when you come in sight of Moffitt — my, oh
my ! Well, you come in smell of it about as soon.
That gas out there ain't odourless, like the Pittsburg
gas, and so it 's perfectly safe ; but the smell isn't
bad — about as bad as the finest kind of benzine.
Well, the first thing that strikes you when you
come to Moffitt is the notion that there has been a
good warm, growing rain, and the town 's come up
overnight That 's in the suburbs, the annexes, and
additions. But it ain't shabby — no shanty-town
business ; nice brick and frame houses, some of 'em
Queen Anne style, and all of 'cm looking as if they
had come to stay. And when you drive up from
the dep6t you think everybody 's moving. Every-
thing seems to be piled into the street ; old houses
made over, and new ones going up everywhere. You
know the kind of street Main Street always used to
be in our section — half plank-road and turnpike, and
the rest mud-hole, and a lot of stores and doggeries
strung along with false fronts a story higher than
the back, and here and there a decent building with
the gable end to the public; and a court-house and

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 107

jail and two taverns and three or four churches.
Well, they 're all there in Moffitt yet, but architecture
has struck it hard, and they Ve got a lot of new
buildings that needn't be ashamed of themselves
anywhere ; the new court-house is as big as St.
Peter's, and the Grand Opera-house is in the highest
style of the art. You can't buy a lot on that street
for much less than you can buy a lot in New York
— or you couldn't when the boom was on; I saw
the place just when the boom was in its prime. I
went out there to work the newspapers in the
syndicate business, and I got one of their men to
write me a real bright, snappy account of the gas ;
and they just took me in their arms and showed me
everything. Well, it was wonderful, and it was
beautiful, too ! To see a whole community stirred up
like that was — just like a big boy, all hope and high
spirits, and no discount on the remotest future ;
nothing but perpetual boom to the end of time — I
tell you it warmed your blood. Why, there were
some things about it that made you think what a
nice kind of world this would be if people ever took
hold together, instead of each fellow fighting it out
on his own hook, and devil take the hindmost. They
made up their minds at Moffitt that if they wanted
their town to grow they 'd got to keep their gas
public property. So they extended their corporation
line so as to take in pretty much the whole gas
region round there ; and then the city took posses-
sion of every well that was put down, and held it
for the common good. Anybody that 's a mind to

108 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

come to Moffitt and start any kind of manufacture
can have all the gas he wants free ; and for fifteen
dollars a year you can have all the gas you want to
heat and light your private house. The people hold
on to it for themselves, and, as I say, it 's a grand
sight to see a whole community hanging together
and working for the good of all, instead of splitting
up into as many different cut-throats as there are
able-bodied citizens. See that fellow *? " Fulkerson
broke off, and indicated with a twirl of his head a
short, dark, foreign-looking man going out of the
door. " They say that fellow 's a Socialist. I think
it 's a shame they 're allowed to come here. If they
don't like the way we manage our affairs, let 'em
stay at home," Fulkerson continued. "They do a
lot of mischief, shooting off their mouths round here.
I believe in free speech and all that ; but I 'd like
to see these fellows shut up in jail and left to jaw
each other to death. We don't want any of their
poison."

March did not notice the vanishing Socialist. He
was watching, with a teasing sense of familiarity, a
tall, shabbily dressed, elderly man, who had just
come in. He had the aquiline profile uncommon
among Germans, and yet March recognised him at
once as German. His long, soft beard and moustache
had once been fair, and they kept some tone of their
yellow in the gray to which they had turned. His
eyes were full, and his lips and chin shaped the beard
to the noble outline which shows in the beards the
Italian masters liked to paint for their Last Suppers.

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 109

His carriage was erect and soldierly, and March
presently saw that he had lost his left hand. He
took his place at a table where the overworked
waiter found time to cut up his meat, and put
-everything in easy reach of his right hand.

" Well," Fulkerson resumed, " they took me round
everywhere in Moffitt, and showed me their big
wells — lit 'em up for a private view, and let me hear
them purr with the soft accents of a mass-meeting
of locomotives. Why, when they let one of these
wells loose in a meadow that they 'd piped it into
temporarily, it drove the flame away forty feet from
the mouth of the pipe and blew it over half an acre
of ground. They say when they let one of their
big wells burn away all winter before they had
learned how to control it, that well kept up a little
summer all around it ; the grass stayed green, and
the flowers bloomed all through the winter. / don't
know whether it's so or not. But I can believe
anything of natural gas. My ! but it was beautiful
when they turned on the full force of that well and
shot a roman candle into the gas — that 's the way
they light it — and a plume of fire about twenty feet
wide and seventy-five feet high, all red and yellow
and violet, jumped into the sky, and that big roar
shook the ground under your feet ! You felt like
saying, 'Don't trouble yourself; I'm perfectly con-
vinced. I believe in Moffitt.' We-e-e-ll! " drawled
Fulkerson, with a long breath, " that V where I met
old Dryfoos."

" Oh yes ! — Dryfoos," said March. He observed

110 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

that the waiter had brought the old one-handed
German a towering glass of beer.

" Yes," Fulkerson laughed. " We Ve got round
to Dryfoos again. I thought I could cut a long
story short, but I seem to be cutting a short story
long. If you 're not in a hurry, though —

" Not in the least. Go on as long as you like."
" I met him there in the office of a real-estate man
— speculator, of course ; everybody was, in Moffitt ;
but a first-rate fellow, and public-spirited as all get-
out ; and when Dryfoos left he told me about him.
Dryfoos was an old Pennsylvania Dutch farmer,
about three or four miles out of Moffitt, and he 'd
lived there pretty much all his life ; father was one
of the first settlers. Everybody knew he had the
right stuff in him, but he was slower than molasses
in January, like those Pennsylvania Dutch. He 'd
got together the largest and handsomest farm any-
where around there ; and he was making money on
it, just like he was in some business somewhere ;
he was a very intelligent man ; he took the papers
and kept himself posted ; but he was awfully old-
fashioned in his ideas. He hung on to the doctrines
as well as the dollars of the dads ; it was a real
thing with him. Well, when the boom began to
come he hated it awfully, and he fought it. He
used to write communications to the weekly news-
paper in Moffitt — they've got three dailies there
now — and throw cold water on the boom. He
couldn't catch on no way. It made him sick to
hear the clack that went on about the gas the

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. Ill

whole while, and that stirred up the neighbour-
hood and got into his family. Whenever he'd
hear of a man that had been offered a big price
for his land and was going to sell out and move
into town, he 'd go and labour with him and try to
talk him out of it, and tell him how long his fifteen
or twenty thousand would last him to live on, and
shake the Standard Oil Company before him, and
try to make him believe it wouldn't be five years
before the Standard owned the whole region.

"Of course he couldn't do anything with them.
"When a man 's offered a big price for his farm, he
•don't care whether it 's by a secret emissary from
the Standard Oil or not ; he 's going to sell and get
the better of the other fellow if he can. Dryfoos
•couldn't keep the boom out of his own family even.
His wife was with him. She thought whatever he
said and did was just as right as if it had been
thundered down from Sinai. But the young folks
were sceptical, especially the girls that had been
away to school. The boy that had been kept at
home because he couldn't be spared from helping
his father manage the farm was more like him, but
they contrived to stir the boy up with the hot end
of the boom too. So when a fellow came along one
day and offered old Dryfoos a cool hundred thousand
for his farm, it was all up with Dryfoos. He 'd V
liked to 'a' kept the offer to himself and not done
anything about it, but his vanity wouldn't let him
do that ; and when he let it out in his family the
girls outvoted him. They just made him sell.

112 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

" He wouldn't sell all. He kept about eighty
acres that was off in one piece by itself, but the
three hundred that had the old brick house on it,
and the big barn — that went, and Dryfoos bought
him a place in Moffitt and moved into town to live
on the interest of his money. Just what he had
scolded and ridiculed everybody else for doing.
Well, they say that at first he seemed like he
would go crazy. He hadn't anything to do. He
took a fancy to that land-agent, and he used to
go and set in his office and ask him what he should
do. ' I hain't got any horses, I hain't got any cows,
I hain't got any pigs, I hain't got any chickens. I
hain't got anything to do from sun up to sundown.'
The fellow said the tears used to run down the old
fellow's cheeks, and if he hadn't been so busy him-
self he believed he should 'a' cried too. But most
o' people thought old Dryfoos was down in the
mouth because he hadn't asked more for his farm,
when he wanted to buy it back and found they held
it at a hundred and fifty thousand. People couldn't
believe he was just homesick and heartsick for the
old place. Well, perhaps he was sorry he hadn't
asked more ; that 's human nature too.

" After a while something happened. That land-
agent used to tell Dryfoos to get out to Europe
with his money and see life a little, or go and live
in Washington, where he could be somebody ; but
Dryfoos wouldn't, and he kept listening to the talk
there, and all of a sudden he caught on. He came
into that fellow's one day with a plan for cutting

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 113

up the eighty acres he 'd kept into town lots ; and
he 'd got it all plotted out so well, and had so many
practical ideas about it, that the fellow was aston-
ished. He went right in with him, as far as
Dryfoos would let him, and glad of the chance ;
and they were working the thing for all it was
worth when I struck Moffitt. Old Dryfoos wanted
me to go out and see the Dryfoos & Hendry Addi-
tion— guess he thought may be I 'd write it up ; and
he drove me out there himself. Well, it was funny
to see a town made : streets driven through ; two
rows of shade-trees, hard and soft, planted ; cellars
dug and houses put up — regular Queen Anne style,
too, with stained glass — all at once. Dryfoos apolo-
gised for the streets because they were hand-made ;
said they expected their street-making machine
Tuesday, and then they intended to push things."

Fulkerson enjoyed the effect of his picture on
March for a moment, and then went on : " He was
mighty intelligent, too, and he questioned me up
about my business as sharp as I ever was ques-
tioned ; seemed to kind of strike his fancy ; I guess
he wanted to find out if there was any money in it.
He was making money, hand over hand, then ; and
he never stopped speculating and improving, till
he 'd scraped together three or four hundred
thousand dollars ; they said a million, but they like
round numbers at Moffitt, and I guess half a million
would lay over it comfortably and leave a few
thousands to spare, probably. Then he came on
to New York."

114 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

Fulkerson struck a match against the ribbed side
of the porcelain cup that held the matches in the
centre of the table, and lit a cigarette, which he
began to smoke, throwing his head back with a
leisurely effect, as if he had got to the end of at least
as much of his story as he meant to tell without
prompting.

March asked him the desired question. "What
in the world for ? "

Fulkerson took out his cigarette and said, with a
smile : " To spend his money, and get his daughters
into the old Knickerbocker society. May be he
thought they were all the same kind of Dutch."

" And has he succeeded ? "

" Well, they 're not social leaders yet. But it 's
only a question of time — generation or two — espe-
cially if time's money, and if Every Other Week is
the success it's bound to be."

" You don't mean to say, Fulkerson," said March,
with a half doubting, half-daunted laugh, "that he's
your Angel ? "

" That 's what I mean to say," returned Fulkerson.
<; I ran onto him in Broadway one day last summer.
If you ever saw anybody in your life, you 're sure to
meet him in Broadway again, sooner or later. That 's
the philosophy of the bunco business; country
people from the same neighbourhood are sure to run
up against each other the first time they come to
New York. I put out my hand, and I said, ' Isn't
this Mr. Dryfoos from Moffitt ? ' He didn't seem to
have any use for my hand j he let me keep it, and

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 115

he squared those old lips of his till his imperial stuck
straight out. Ever see Bernhardt in L'fitrangere 1
Well, the American husband is old Dryfoos all over ;
no moustache, and hay-coloured chin-whiskers cut
slanting from the corners of his mouth. He cocked
his little gray eyes at me, and says he, ' Yes, young
man. My name is' Dryfoos, and I 'm from Moffitt.
But I don't want no present of Longfellow's Works,
illustrated ; and I don't want to taste no fine teas ;
but I know a policeman that does ; and if you 're
the son of my old friend Squire Strohfeldt, you 'cl
better get out.' ' Well, then,' said I, ' how would
you like to go into the newspaper syndicate busi-
ness 1 ' He gave another look at me, and then he
burst out laughing, and he grabbed my hand, and
he just froze to it. I never saw anybody so glad.

" Well, the long and the short of it was that I
asked him round here to Maroni's to dinner ; and
before we broke up for the night we had settled the
financial side of the plan that's brought you to New
York. I can see," said Fulkerson, who had kept his
eyes fast on March's face, " that you don't more than
half like the idea of Dryfoos. It ought to give you
more confidence in the thing than you ever had.
You needn't be afraid," he added, with some feeling,
" that I talked Dryfoos into the thing for my own
advantage."

"Oh, my dear Fulkerson !" March protested, all
the more fervently because he was really a little
guilty.

" Well, of course not ! I didn't mean you were.

116 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

But I just happened to tell him what I wanted to
go into when I could see my way to it, and he caught
on of his own accord. The fact is," said Fulkerson,
" I guess I 'd better make a clean breast of it, now
I 'm at it. Dryfoos wanted to get something for
that boy of his to do. He's in railroads himself,
and he's in mines and other things, and he keeps
busy, and he can't bear to have his boy hanging
round the house doing nothing, like as if he was a
girl. I told him that the great object of a rich man
was to get his son into just that fix, but he couldn't
seem to see it, and the boy hated it himself. He 's
got a good head, and he wanted to study for the
ministry when they were all living together out on
the farm ; but his father had the old-fashioned ideas
about that. You know they used to think that any
sort of stuff was good enough to make a preacher
out of ; but they wanted the good timber for busi-
ness ; and so the old man wouldn't let him. You '11
see the fellow ; you '11 like him ; he 's no fool, I can
tell you ; and he 's going to be our publisher,
nominally at first and actually when I ;ve taught
him the ropes a little."

XII.

FULKERSON stopped and looked at March, whom
he saw lapsing into a serious silence. Doubtless he
divined his uneasiness with the facts that had been
given him to digest. He pulled out his watch and
glanced at it. " See here, how would you like to go
up to Forty-sixth Street with me, and drop in on
old Dryfoos ? Now 's your chance. He 's going
West to-morrow, and won't be back for a month or
so. They '11 all be glad to see you, and you '11
understand things better when you 've seen him and
his family. I can't explain."

March reflected a moment. Then he said, with a
wisdom that surprised him, for he would have liked
to yield to the impulse of his curiosity : " Perhaps
we 'd better wait till Mrs. March comes down, and
let things take the usual course. The Dryfoos
ladies will want to call on her as the last-comer, and
if I treated myself en garqon now, and paid the first
visit, it might complicate matters."

" Well, perhaps you 're right," said Fulkerson.
" I don't know much about these things, and I don't
believe Ma Dryfoos does either." He was on his
legs lighting another cigarette. "I suppose the

118 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

girls are getting themselves up in etiquette, though.
Well, then, let 's have a look at the Every Other Week
building, and then, if you like your quarters there,
you can go round and close for Mrs. Green's flat."

March's dormant allegiance to his wife's wishes
had been roused by his decision in favour of good
social usage. " I don't think I shall take the flat/'
he said.

"Well, don't reject it without giving it another
look, anyway. Come on ! "

He helped March on with his light overcoat, and
the little stir they made for their departure caught
the notice of the old German ; he looked up from
his beer at them. March was more than ever
impressed with something familiar in his face. In
compensation for his prudence in regard to the
Dryfooses he now indulged an impulse. He stepped
across to where the old man sat, with his bald head
shining like ivory under the gas-jet, and his fine
patriarchal length of bearded mask taking picturesque
lights and shadows, and put out his hand to him.

" Lindau ! Isn't this Mr. Lindau ? "

The old man lifted himself slowly to his feet with
mechanical politeness, and cautiously took March's
hand. " Yes, my name is Lindau," he said slowly,
while he scanned Mai'ch's face. Then he broke into
a long cry. " Ah-h-h-h-h, my dear poy ! my yong

friendt ! my — my Idt is Passil Marge, not zo ?

Ah, ha, ha, ha ! How gladt I am to zee you ! Why,
I am gladt ! And you rememberdt me ? You
remember Schiller, and Goethe, and Uhland 1 And

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 119

Indianapolis ? You still lif in Indianapolis 1 It
sheers my hardt to zee you. But you are lidtle oldt
too ? Tventy-five years makes a difference. Ah, I
am gladt ! Dell me, idt is Passil Marge, not zo 1 "

He looked anxiously into March's face, with a
gentle smile of mixed hope and doubt, and March
said : " As sure as it's Berthold Lindau, and I guess
it 's you. And you remember the old times 1 You
were as much of a boy as I was, Lindau. Are you
living in New York 1 Do you recollect how you
tried to teach me to fence 1 I don't know how
to this day, Lindau. How good you were, and how
patient ! Do you remember how we used to sit up
in the little parlour back of your printing office, and
read Die Eiluber and Die Theilang der Erde and Die
Glocfce 1 And Mrs. Lindau 1 Is she with —

"Deadt — deadt long ago. Eight after I got
home from the war — tventy years ago. But tell
me, you are married 1 Children 1 Yes ! Goodt !
And how oldt are you now 1 "

" It makes me seventeen to see you, Lindau, but
I Ve got a son nearly as old."

"Ah, ha, ha! Goodt! And where do you
lif ? "

"Well, I'm just coming to live in New York,"
March said, looking over at Fulkerson, who had
been watching his interview with the perfunctory
smile of sympathy that people put on at the meet-
ing of old friends. " I want to introduce you to my
friend Mr. Fulkerson. He and I are going into a
literary enterprise here."

120 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

" Ah ! zo ? " said the old man, with polite interest.
He took Fulkerson's proffered hand, and they all
stood talking a few moments together.

Then Fulkerson said, with another look at his
watch, " Well, March, we 're keeping Mr. Lindau
from his dinner."

" Dinner ! " cried the old man. " Idt 's better
than breadt and meadt to see Mr. Marge ! "

" I must be going, anyway," said March. " But I
must see you again soon, Lindau. Where do you
live ? I want a long talk."

"And I. You will find me here at dinner-time,"
said the old man. " It is the best place ;" and March
fancied him reluctant to give another address.

To cover his consciousness he answered gaily,
" Then, it 's (mf wiedersehen with us. Well ! "

"Also ! " The old man took his hand, and made
a mechanical movement with his mutilated arm, as
if he would have taken it in a double clasp. He
laughed at himself. "I w anted to gif you the
other handt too, but I gafe it to your gountry a
goodt while ago."

" To my country ? " asked March, with a sense of
pain, and yet lightly, as if it were a joke of the old
man's. " Your country too, Lindau ] "

The old man turned very grave, and said, almost
coldly, " What gountry hass a poor man got, Mr.
Marge ? "

" Well, you ought to have a share in the one you
helped to save for us rich men, Lindau," March re-
turned, still humouring the joke.

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 121

The old man smiled sadly, but made no answer as
he sat- down again.

" Seems to be a little soured," said Fulkerson, as
they went down the steps. He was one of those
Americans whose habitual conception of life is
unalloyed prosperity. When any experience or
observation of his went counter to it he suffered
something like physical pain. He eagerly shrugged
away the impression left upon his buoyancy by
Lindau, and added to March's continued silence,
" What did I tell you about meeting every man in
New York that you ever knew before 1 "

" I never expected to meet Lindau in the world
again," said March, more to himself than to Fulker-
son. " I had an impression that he had been killed
in the war. I almost wish he had been."

" Oh, hello, now ! " cried Fulkerson.

March laughed, but went on soberly. " He was a
man predestined to adversity, though. When I
first knew him out in Indianapolis he was starving
along with a sick wife and a sick newspaper. It
was before the Germans had come over to the
Eepublicans generally, but Lindau was fighting the
anti-slavery battle just as naturally at Indianapolis
in 1858 as he fought behind the barricades at Berlin
in 1848. And yet he was always such a gentle soul !
And so generous ! He taught me German for the
love of it ; he wouldn't spoil his pleasure by taking
a cent from me ; he -seemed to get enough out of
my being young and enthusiastic, and out of
prophesying great things for me. I wonder what
VOL. I.— 6

122 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

the poor old fellow is doing here, with that one
hand of his ? "

"Not amassing a very handsome pittance, I
should say," said Fulkerson, getting back some of
his lightness. " There are lots of two-handed fellows
in New York that are not doing much better, I
guess. May be he gets some writing on the German
papers."

"I hope so. He's one of the most accomplished
men ! He used to be a splendid musician — pianist
— and knows eight or ten languages."

"Well, it's astonishing," said Fulkerson, "how
much lumber those Germans can carry around in
their heads all their lives, and never work it up into
anything. It 's a pity they couldn't do the acquiring,
and let out the use of their learning to a few bright
Americans. We could make things hum, if we could
arrange 'em that way."

He talked on, unheeded by March, who went
along half-consciously tormented by his lightness in
the pensive memories the meeting with Lindau had
called up. Was this all that sweet, unselfish nature
could come to ? What a homeless old age at that
meagre Italian table d'hote, with that tall glass of
beer for a half-hour's oblivion ! That shabby dress,
that pathetic mutilation ! He must have a pension,
twelve dollars a month, or eighteen, from a grateful
country. But what else did he eke out with 1

"Well, here we are," said . Fulkerson cheerily.
He ran up the steps before March, and opened the
carpenter's temporary valve in the door frame, and

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 123

led the way into a darkness smelling sweetly of
unpainted wood- work and newly dried plaster ; their
feet slipped on shavings and grated on sand. He
scratched a match, and found a candle, and then
walked about up and down stairs, and lectured on
the advantages of the place. He had fitted up
bachelor apartments for himself in the house, and
said that he was going to have a flat to let on the
top floor. " I didn't offer it to you because I supposed
you 'd be too proud to live over your shop ; and it 's
too small, anyway ; only five rooms."

" Yes, that 's too small," said March, shirking the
other point.

"Well, then, here's the room I intend for your
office," said Fulkerson, showing him into a large back
parlour one flight up. " You '11 have it quiet from
the street noises here, and you can be at home or
not as you please. There '11 be a boy on the stairs
to find out. Now, you see, this makes the Grosvenor
Green flat practicable, if you want it."

March felt the forces of fate closing about him
and pushing him to a decision. He feebly fought
them off till he could have another look at the flat.
Then, baffled and subdued still more by the unex-
pected presence of Mrs. Grosvenor Green herself,
who was occupying it so as to be able to show it
effectively, he took it. He was aware more than
ever of its absurdities ; he knew that his wife would
never cease to hate it ; but he had suffered one of
those eclipses of the imagination to Avhich men of
his temperament are subject, and in which he could

124 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

see no future for his desires. He felt a comfort in
irretrievably committing himself, and exchanging the
burden of indecision for the burden of responsibility.

" I didn't know," said Fulkerson, as they walked
back to his hotel together, " but you might fix it up
with that lone widow and her pretty daughter to
take part of their house here." He seemed to be
reminded of it by the fact of passing the house, and
March looked up at its dark front. He could not
have told exactly why he felt a pang of remorse at
the sight, and doubtless it was more regret for
having taken the Grosvenor Green flat than for not
having taken the widow's rooms. Still he could not
forget her wistfulness when his wife and he were
looking at them, and her disappointment when they
decided against them. He had toyed, in his after-
talk to Mrs. March, with a sort of hypothetical
obligation they had to modify their plans so as to
meet the widow's want of just such a family as
theirs ; they had both said what a blessing it would
be to her, and what a pity they could not do it ;
but they had decided very distinctly that they
could not. Now it seemed to him that they might ;
and he asked himself whether he had not actually
departed as much from their ideal as if he had taken
board with the widow. Suddenly it seemed to him
that his wife asked him this too.

"I reckon," said Fulkerson, " that she could have
arranged to give you your meals in your rooms, and
it would have come to about the same thing as
house-keeping."

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 125

" No sort of boarding can be the same as house-
keeping," said March. "I want my little girl to
have the run of a kitchen, and I want the whole
family to have the moral effect of house-keeping.
It's demoralising to board, in every way; it isn't
a home, if anybody else takes the care of it off your
hands."

" Well, I suppose so," Fulkerson assented ; but
March's words had a hollow ring to himself, and in
his own mind he began to retaliate his dissatisfac-
tion upon Fulkerson.

He parted from him on the usual terms out-
wardly, but he felt obscurely abused by Fulkerson
in regard to the Dryfooses, father and son. He did
not know but Fulkerson had taken an advantage of
him in allowing him to commit himself to their en-
terprise without fully and frankly telling him who
and what his backer was ; he perceived that with
young Dryfoos as the publisher and Fulkerson as
the general director of the paper there might be
very little play for his own ideas of its conduct.
Perhaps it was the hurt to his vanity involved by
the recognition of this fact that made him forget how
little choice he really had in the matter, and how,
since he had not accepted the offer to edit the in-
surance paper, nothing remained for him but to
close with Fulkerson. In this moment of suspicion
and resentment he accused Fulkerson of hastening
his decision in regard to the Grosvenor Green apart-
ment ; he now refused to consider it a decision, and
said to himself that if he felt disposed to do so he

126 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

would send Mrs. Green a note reversing it in the
morning. But he put it all off till morning with his
clothes, when he went to bed ; he put off even think-
ing what his wife would say ; he cast Fulkerson and
his constructive treachery out of his mind too, and
invited into it some pensive reveries of the past,
when he still stood at the parting of the ways, and
could take this path or that. In his middle life this
was not possible ; he must follow the path chosen
long ago, wherever it led. He was not master of
himself, as he once seemed, but the servant of those
he loved ; if he could do what he liked, perhaps
he might renounce this whole New York enterprise,
and go off somewhere out of the reach of care ; but
he could not do what he liked, that was very clear.
In the pathos of this conviction he dwelt compassion-
ately upon the thought of poor old Liudau ; he
resolved to make him accept a handsome sum of
money — more than he could spare, something that
he would feel the loss of — in payment of the lessons
in German and fencing given so long ago. At the
usual rate for such lessons, his debt, with interest
for twenty odd years, would run very far into the
hundreds. Too far, he perceived, for his wife's
joyous approval ; he determined not to add the
interest ; or he believed that Lindau would refuse
the interest ; he put a fine speech in his mouth,
making him do so ; and after that he got Lindau
employment on Every Other Week, and took care of
him till he died.

Through all his melancholy and munificence he

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 127

was aware of sordid anxieties for having taken the
Grosvenor Green apartment. These began to as-
sume visible, tangible shapes as he drowsed, and to
become personal entities, from which he woke, with
little starts, to a realisation of their true nature, and
then suddenly fell fast asleep.

In the accomplishment of the events which his
reverie played with, there was much that retroac-
tively stamped it with prophecy, but much also
that was better than he forboded. He found that
with regard to the Grosvenor Green apartment he
had not allowed for his wife's willingness to get any
sort of roof over her head again after the removal
from their old home, or for the alleviations that
grow up through mere custom. The practical work-
ings of the apartment were not so bad ; it had its
good points, and after the first sensation of oppres-
sion in it they began to feel the convenience of its
arrangement. They were at that time of life when
people first turn to their children's opinion with
deference, and, in the loss of keenness in their own
likes and dislikes, consult the young preferences
which are still so sensitive. It went far to reconcile
Mrs. March to the apartment that her children were
pleased with its novelty ; when this wore off for
them, she had herself begun to find it much more
easily manageable than a house. After she had put
away several barrels of gimcracks, and folded up
screens and rugs and skins, and carried them all off to
the little dark store-room which the flat developed,
she perceived at once a roominess and coziness in it

128 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

unsuspected before. Then, when people began to
call, she had a pleasure, a superiority, in saying that
it was a furnished apartment, and in disclaiming all
responsibility for the upholstery and decoration. If
March was by, she always explained that it was
Mr. March's fancy, and amiably laughed it off with
her callers as a mannish eccentricity. Nobody really
seemed to think it otherwise than pretty ; and this
again was a triumph for Mrs. March, because it
showed how inferior the New York taste was to the
Boston taste in such matters.

March submitted silently to his punishment, and
laughed with her before company at his own eccen-
tricity. She had been so preoccupied with the
adjustment of the family to its new quarters and
circumstances that the time passed for laying his
misgivings, if they were misgivings, about Fulkerson
before her, and when an occasion came for express-
ing them they had themselves passed in the anxieties
of getting forward the first number of Every Other
Week. He kept these from her too, and the biisiness
that brought them to New York had apparently
dropped into abeyance before the questions of
domestic economy that presented and absented
themselves. March knew his wife to be a woman
of good mind and in perfect sympathy with him,
"but he understood the limitations of her perspective ;
and if he was not too wise, he was too experienced
to intrude upon it any affairs of his till her own
were reduced to the right order and proportion. It
would have been folly to talk to her of Fulkerson's

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 129

%

conjecturable uncandour while she was in doubt
whether her cook would like the kitchen, or her two
servants would consent to room together ; and till it
was decided what school Tom should go to, and
whether Bella should have lessons at home or not,
the relation which March was to bear to the Dry-
fooses, as owner and publisher, was not to be dis-
cussed with his wife. He might drag it in, but he
was aware that with her mind distracted by more
immediate interests he could not get from her that
judgment, that reasoned divination, which he relied
upon so much. She would try, she would do her
best, but the result would be a view clouded and
discoloured by the effort she must make.

He put the whole matter by, and gave himself to
the details of the work before him. In this he found
not only escape, but reassurance, for it became more
and more apparent that whatever was nominally the
structure of the business, a man of his qualifications
and his instincts could not have an insignificant
place in it. He had also the consolation of liking
his work, and of getting an instant grasp of it that
grew constantly firmer and closer. The joy of
knowing that he had not made a mistake was great.
In giving rein to ambitions long forborne he seemed
to get back to the youth when he had indulged them
first ; and after half a lifetime passed in pursuits
alien to his nature, he was feeling the serene happi-
ness of being mated through his work to his early
love. From the outside the spectacle might have
had its pathos, and it is not easy to justify such an
6*

130 A HAZARD OF XFAV FORTUNES.

•

experiment as he had made at his time of life, except
upon the ground where he rested from its con-
sideration— the ground of necessity.

His work was more in his thoughts than himself,
however, and as the time for the publication of the
first number of his periodical came nearer, his cares
all centred upon it. Without fixing any date,
Fulkerson had announced it, and pushed his
announcements with the shameless vigour of a born
advertiser. He worked his interest with the press
to the utmost, and paragraphs of a variety that did
•credit to his ingenuity were afloat everywhere.
Some of them were speciously unfavourable in tone ;
they criticised and even ridiculed the principles on
-which the new departure in literary journalism was
based. Others defended it ; others yet denied that
this rumoured principle was really the principle.
All contributed to make talk. All proceeded from
the same fertile invention.

March observed with a degree of mortification
that the talk was very little of it in the New York
pres ; there the references to the novel enterprise
were slight and cold. But Fulkerson said : " Don't
mind that, old man. It's the whole country that
makes or breaks a thing like this ; Xew York has
very little to do with it. Now if it were a play,
it would be different. New York does make or
break a play ; but it doesn't make or break a book ;
it doesn't make or break a magazine. The great
mass of the readers are outside of New York, and
the rural districts are what we have got to go for.

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 131

They don't read much in New York ; they write,
and talk about what they Ve written. Don't you
worry."

The rumour of Fulkerson's connection with the
enterprise accompanied many of the paragraphs, and
he was able to stay March's thirst for employment
by turning over to him from day to day heaps of
the manuscripts which began to pour in from his
old syndicate writers, as well as from adventurous
volunteers all over the country. With these in
hand March began practically to plan the first
number, and to concrete a general scheme from the
material and the experience they furnished. They
had intended to issue the first number with the new
year, and if it had been an affair of literature alone,
it would have been very easy ; but it was the art
leg they limped on, as Fulkerson phrased it. They
had not merely to deal with the question of specific
illustrations for this article or that, but to decide the
whole character of their illustrations, and first of all
to get a design for a cover which should both
ensnare the heedless and captivate the fastidious.
These things did not come properly within March's
province — that had been clearly understood — and
for a while Fulkerson tried to run the art leg him-
self. The phrase was again his, but it was simpler
to make the phrase than to run the leg. The diffi-
cult generation, at once stiff- backed and slippery,
with Avhich he had to do in this endeavour, reduced
even so buoyant an optimist to despair, and after
wasting some valuable weeks in trying to work the
K

132 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

artists himself, he determined to get an artist to
work them. But what artist ? It could not be a
man with fixed reputation and a following : he
would be too costly, and would have too many
enemies among his brethren, even if he would con-
sent to undertake the job. Fulkerson had a man in
mind, an artist too, who would have been the very
thing if he had been the thing at all. He had
talent enough, and his sort of talent would reach
round the whole situation, but, as Fulkerson said,
he was as many kinds of an ass as he was kinds of
an artist

PART SECOND.
I.

THE evening when March closed with Mrs. Green's
reduced offer, and decided to take her apartment,
the widow whose lodgings he had rejected sat with
her daughter in an upper room at the back of her
house. In the shaded glow of the drop-light she
was sewing, and the girl was drawing at the same
table. From time to time, as they talked, the girl
lifted her head and tilted it a little on one side so as
to get some desired effect of her work.

"It's a mercy the cold weather holds off," said
the mother. " We should have to light the furnace,
unless we wanted to scare everybody away with a
cold house ; and I don't know who would take care
of it, or what would become of us, every way."

" They seem to have been scared away from a
house that wasn't cold," said the girl. " Perhaps
they might like a cold one. But it 's too early for
cold yet. It's only just in the beginning of No-
vember."

" The Messenger says they 've had a sprinkling of
snow."

134 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

" Oh yes, at St. Barnaby ! I don't know when
they don't have sprinklings of snow there. I'm
awfully glad we haven't got that winter before us."

The widow sighed as mothers do who feel the
contrast their experience opposes to the hopeful
recklessness of such talk as this. " We may have a
worse winter here," she said darkly.

" Then I couldn't stand it," said the girl, " and I
should go in for lighting out to Florida double-
quick."

" And how would you get to Florida 1 " demanded
her mother severely.

" Oh, by the usual conveyance — Pullman vesti-
buled train, I suppose. What makes you so blue,
mamma 1 " The girl was all the time sketching away,
rubbing out, lifting her head for the effect, and then
bending it over her work again without looking at
her mother.

" I am not blue, Alma. But I cannot endure this
— this hopefulness of yours."

" Why ? What harm does it do 1 "

" Harm ? " echoed the mother.

Pending the effort she must make in saying, the
girl cut in : " Yes, harm. You Ve kept your despair
dusted off and ready for use at an instant's notice
ever since we came, and what good has it done 1
I'm going to keep on hoping to the bitter end.
That 's what papa did."

It was what the Rev. Archibald Leighton had
done with all the consumptive's buoyancy. The
morning he died he told them that now he had

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 135

turned the point and was really going to get well.
The cheerfulness was not only in his disease, but
in his temperament. Its excess was always a little
against him in his church-work, and Mrs. Leighton.
was right enough in feeling that if it had not been
for the ballast of her instinctive despondency he
would have made shipwreck of such small chances
of prosperity as befell him in life. It was not from
him that his daughter got her talent, though he had
left her his temperament intact of his widow's legal
thirds. He was one of those men of whom the
country people say when he is gone that the woman
gets along better without him. Mrs. Leigliton had
long eked out their income by taking a summer
boarder or two, as a great favour, into her family ;
and when the greater need came, she frankly gave
up her house to the summer-folks (as they call them
in the country), and managed it for their comfort
from the small quarter of it in which she shut her-
self up with her daughter.

The notion of shutting up is an exigency of the
rounded period. The fact is, of course, that Alma
Leigliton was not shut up in any sense Avhatever.
She was the pervading light, if not force, of the
house. She Avas a good cook, and she managed the
kitchen with the help of an Irish girl, while her
mother looked after the rest of the house-keeping.
But she was not systematic ; she had inspiration but
not discipline, and her mother mourned more over
the days when Alma left the whole dinner to the
Irish girl than she rejoiced in those when one of

136 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

Alma's great thoughts took form in a chicken-pie of
incomparable savour or in a matchless pudding. The
off-days came when her artistic nature was express-
ing itself in charcoal, for she drew to the admiration
of all among the lady boarders who could not draw.
The others had their reserves ; they readily conceded
that Alma had genius, but they were sure she needed
instruction. On the other hand, they were not so
radical as to agree with the old painter who came
every summer to paint the elms of the St. Barnaby
meadows. He contended that she needed to be a
man in order to amount to anything; but in this
theory he was opposed by an authority of his own
sex, whom the lady sketchers believed to speak with
more impartiality in a matter concerning them as
much as Alma Leighton. He said that instruction
would do, and he was not only younger and
handsomer, but he was fresher from the schools
than old Harrington, who, even the lady sketchers
could see, painted in an obsolescent manner. His
name was Beaton — Angus Beaton ; but he was not
Scotch, or not more Scotch than Mary Queen of
Scots was. His father was a Scotchman, but Beaton
was born in Syracuse, New York, and it had taken
only three years in Paris to obliterate many traces
of native and ancestral manner in him. He wore
his black beard cut shorter than his moustache, and
a little pointed ; he stood with his shoulders well
thrown back and with a lateral curve of his person
when he talked about art, which would alone have
carried conviction even if he had not had a thick,

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 137

dark bang coming almost to the brows of his mobile
grey eyes, and had not spoken English with quick,
staccato impulses, so as to give it the effect of
epigrammatic and sententious French. One of the
ladies said that you always thought of him as
having spoken French after it was over, and accused
herself of wrong in not being able to feel afraid of
him. None of the ladies were afraid of him, though
they could not believe that he was really so de-
ferential to their work as he seemed ; and they
knew, when he would not criticise Mr. Harrington's
work, that he was just acting from principle.

They may or may not have known the difference
with which he treated Alma's work ; but the girl
herself felt that his abrupt, impersonal comment
recognised her as a real sister in art. He told her
she ought to come to New York, and draw in the
League, or get into some painter's private class ; and
it was the sense of duty thus appealed to which
finally resulted in the hazardous experiment she and
her mother were now making. There were no
logical breaks in the chain of their reasoning from
past success with boarders in St. Barnaby to future
success with boarders in New York. Of course the
outlay was much greater. The rent of the furnished
house they had taken was such that if they failed
their experiment would be little less than ruinous.

But they were not going to fail ; that was what
Alma contended, with a hardy courage that her
mother sometimes felt almost invited failure, if it
did not deserve it. She was one of those people

138 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

who believe that if you dread harm enough it is less
likely to happen. She acted on this superstition as
if it were a religion.

" If it had not been for my despair, as you call it,
Alma," she answered, " I don't know where we
should have been now."

" I suppose we should have been in St Barnaby,"
said the girl. " And if it 's worse to be in Xew
York, you see what your despair's done, mamma.
But what 's the use 1 You meant well, and I don't
blame you. You can't expect even despair to come
out always just the way you want it. Perhaps
you 've used too much of it." The girl laughed, and
Mrs. Leighton laughed too. Like every one else,
she was not merely a prevailing mood, as people are
apt to be in books, but was an irregularly spheroidal
character, with surfaces that caught the different
lights of circumstance and reflected them. Alma
got up and took a pose before the mirror, which she
then transferred to her sketch. The room was
pinned about with other sketches, which showed
with fantastic indistinctness in the shaded gas-light.
Alma held up the drawing. " How do you like it 1 ''

Mrs. Leighton bent forward over her sewing to
look at it. "You've got the man's face rather
weak."

"Yes, that's so. Either I see all the hidden
weakness that 's in men's natures, and bring it to
the surface in their figures, or else I put my own
weakness into them. And anyway, it's a draw-
back to their presenting a truly manly appearance.

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 139

As long as I have one of the miserable objects
before me, I can draw him ; but as soon as his
back 's turned I get to putting ladies into men's
clothes. I should think you 'd be scandalised,
mamma, if. you were a really feminine person. It
must be your despair that helps you to bear up.
But what 's the matter with the young lady in
young lady's clothes 1 Any dust on her 1 "

" What expressions ! " said Mrs. Leighton.
" Really, Alma, for a refined girl you are the most
unrefined ! "

" Go on — about the girl in the picture ! " said
Alma, slightly knocking her mother on the shoulder,
as she stood over her.

" I don't see anything to her. What 's she doing 1"

" Oh, just being made love to, I suppose."

" She 's perfectly insipid ! "

" You 're awfully articulate, mamma ! Now, if
Mr. Wetmore was to criticise that picture he'd
draw a circle round it in the air, and look at it
through that, and tilt his head first on one side and
then on the other, and then look at you, as if you
were a figure in it, and then collapse a while, and
moan a little and gasp, ' Isn't your young lady a

little too — too ' and then he 'd try to get the word

out of you, and groan and suffer some more ; and
you 'd say, ' She is, rather,' and that would give him
courage, and he 'd say, ' I don't mean that she 's so

very ' 'Of course not.' 'You understand?'

' Perfectly. I see it myself, now.' ' Well then,' —
and he 'd take your pencil and begin to draw — ' I

140 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

should give her a little more Ah 1 ' f Yes, I see

the difference.' ' You see the difference ? ' And
he 'd go off to some one else, and you 'd know that
you'd been doing the wishy-washiest thing in the
world, though he hadn't spoken a word of criticism,
and couldn't. But he wouldn't have noticed the
expression at all ; he 'd have shown you where your,
drawing was bad. He doesn't care for what he
calls the literature of a thing ; he says that will take
care of itself if the drawing's good. He doesn't
like my doing these chic things ; but I 'm going to
keep it up, for / think it 's the nearest Avay to
illustrating."

She took her sketch and pinned it up on the door.

"And has Mr. Beaton been about, yet?" asked
her mother.

" No," said the girl, with her back still turned ;
and she added, " I believe he 's in New York ; Mr.
Wetmore 's seen him."

"It's a little strange he doesn't call."

" It would be if he were not an artist. But
artists never do anything like other people. He
was on his good behaviour while he was with' us,
and he 's a great deal more conventional than most
of them ; but even he can't keep it up. That 's what
makes me really think that women can never
amount to anything in art. They keep all their
appointments, and fulfil all their duties just as if
they didn't know anything about art. Well, most
of them don't. We 've got that new model to-day."

" What new model ? "

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 141

" The one Mr. Wetmore was telling us about —
the old German ; he 's splendid. He 's got the most
beautiful head ; just like the old masters' things.
He used to be /Humphrey Williams's model for his
biblical pieces ; but since he 's dead, the old man
hardly gets anything to do. Mr. Wetmore says
there isn't anybody in the Bible that Williams
didn't paint him as. He 's the Law and the Prophets
in all his Old Testament pictures, and he 's Joseph,
Peter, Judas Iscariot, and the Scribes and Pharisees
in the New."

" It 's a good thing people don't know how artists
work, or some of the most sacred pictures would
have no influence," said Mrs. Leighton.

" Why, of course not ! " cried the girl. " And the
influence is the last thing a painter thinks of — or
supposes he thinks of. What he knows he 's anxious
about is the drawing and the colour. But people
will never understand how simple artists are. When
I reflect what a complex and sophisticated being /
am, I in afraid I can never come to anything in art.
Or I should be if I hadn't genius."

" Do you think Mr. Beaton is very simple ? " asked
Mrs. Leighton.

" Mr. Wetmore doesn't think he 's very much of
an artist. He thinks he talks too well. They
believe that if a man can express himself clearly he
can't paint."

" And what do you believe 1 "

" Oh, / can express myself, too."

The mother seemed to be satisfied with this evasion.

142 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

After a while she said, " I presume he will call when
he gets settled."

The girl made no answer to this. " One of the
girls says that old model is an educated man. He
was in the war, and lost a hand. Doesn't it seem
a pity for such a man to have to sit to a class of
affected geese like us as a model? I declare it
makes me sick. And we shall keep him a week,
and pay him six or seven dollars for the use of his
grand old head, and then what will he do? The
last time he Avas regularly employed was when Mr.
Mace was working at his Damascus Massacre. Then
he wanted so many Arab sheiks and Christian elders
that he kept old Mr. Lindau steadily employed for
six months. Now he has to pick up odd jobs where
he can."

" I suppose he has his pension," said Mrs. Leigh-
ton.

" No ; one of the girls " — that was the way Alma
always described her fellow-students — ': says he has
no pension. He didn't apply for it for a long time,
and then there was a hitch about it, and it was some-
thinged — vetoed, I believe she said."

' Who vetoed it 1 " asked Mrs. Leighton, with
some curiosity about the process, which she held in
reserve.

" I don't know — whoever vetoes things. I wonder
what Mr. Wetmore docs think of us — his class. "Wo
must seem perfectly crazy. There isn't one of us
really knows what she 's doing it for. or what she
expects to happen when she 's done it. I suppose

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 143

every one thinks she has genius. I know the
Nebraska widow does, for she says that unless you
have genius it isn't the least use. Everybody 's
puzzled to know what she does with her baby when
she 's at work — whether she gives it soothing syrup.
I wonder how Mr. Wetmore can keep from laughing
in our faces. I know he does behind our backs."

Mrs. Leighton's mind wandered back to another
point. " Then if he says Mr. Beaton can't paint, I
presume he doesn't respect him very much."

"Oh, he never said he couldn't paint. But I
know he thinks so. He says he 's an excellent
critic."

"Alma," her mother said, with the effect of break-
ing off, " what do you suppose is the reason he hasn't
been near us ? "

" Why, I don't know, mamma, except that it
would have been natural for another person to come,
and he 's an artist — at least, artist enough for that."

" That doesn't account for it altogether. He was
very nice at St. Barnaby, and seemed so interested
in you — your work."

" Plenty of people were nice at St. Barnaby. That
rich Mrs. Horn couldn't contain her joy when she
heard we were coming to New York, but she hasn't
poured in upon us a great deal since we got here."

" But that 's different. She 's very fashionable,
and she 's taken up with her own set. But Mr.
Beaton 's one of our kind."

" Thank you. Papa wasn't quite a tombstone -
cutter, mamma."

144 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

" That makes it all the harder to bear. He can't
be ashamed of us. Perhaps he doesn't know where
we are."

" Do you wish to send him your card, mamma 1 "
The girl flushed and towered in scorn of the idea.

" Why, no, Alma," returned her mother.

"Well, then," said Alma.

But Mrs. Leighton was not so easily quelled. She
had got her mind on Mr. Beaton, and she could not
detach it at once. Besides, she was one of those
women (they are commoner than the same sort of
men) whom it does not pain to take out their most
intimate thoughts and examine them in the light
of other people's opinions. " But I don't see how
he can behave so. He must know that "

" That ivhat, mamma ? " demanded the girl.

" That he influenced us a great deal in
coming "

" He didn't. If he dared to presume to think
such a thing "

" Now, Alma," said her mother with the clinging
persistence of such natures, " you know he did.
And it 's no use for you to pretend that we didn't
count upon him in — in every way. You may not have
noticed his attentions, and I don't say you did, but
others certainly did ; and I must say that I didn't
expect he would drop us so."

" Drop us ! " cried Alma, in a fury. " Oh ! "

" Yes, drop us, Alma. He must know where we
are. Of course, Mr. Wetmore 's spoken to him about
you, and it 's a shame that he hasn't been near us.

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 145

I should have thought common gratitude, common
decency, would have brought him after — after all
we did for him."

" We did nothing for him — nothing ! He paid his
board, and that ended it."

" No, it didn't, Alma. You know what he used
to say — about its being like home, and all that;
and I must say that after his attentions to you, and
all the things you told me he said, I expected some-
thing very dif "

A sharp peal of the door-bell thrilled through the
house, and as if the pull of the bell-wire had
twitched her to her feet, Mrs. Leighton sprang
up and grappled with her daughter in their common
terror.

They both glared at the clock and made sure that
it was five minutes after nine. Then they aban-
doned them some moments to the unrestricted play
of their apprehensions.
VOL. I— 1

IL

" WHY, Alma," whispered the mother, " who in
the world can it be at this time of night ? You
don't suppose he "

" Well, I 'm not going to the door anyhow,
mother, I don't care who it is; and of course he
wouldn't be such a goose as to come at this hour."
She put on a look of miserable trepidation, and
shrank back from the door, while the hum of the
bell died away in the hall.

" What shall we do 1 " asked Mrs. Leighton
helplessly.

" Let him go away — whoever they are," said
Alma.

Another and more peremptory ring forbade them
refuge in this simple expedient.

" Oh dear ! what shall we do ? Perhaps it 's
a despatch."

The conjecture moved Alma to no more than a
rigid stare. " I shall not go," she said. A third
ring more insistent than the others followed, and
she said : " You go ahead, mamma, and I '11 come
behind to scream .if it 's anybody. We can look
through the side-lights at the door first."

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 147

Mrs. Leighton fearfully led the way from the
back chamber where they had been sitting, and
slowly descended the stairs. Alma came behind
and turned up the hall gas-jet with a sudden flash
that made them both jump a little. The gas inside
rendered it more difficult to tell who was on the
threshold, but Mrs. Leighton decided from a timor-
ous peep through the scrims that it was a lady and
gentleman. Something in this distribution of sex
emboldened her ; she took her life in her hand, and
opened the door.

The lady spoke. " Does Mrs. Leighton live heah 1"
she said, in a rich, throaty voice ; and she feigned a
reference to the agent's permit she held in her hand.

"Yes," said Mrs. Leighton; she mechanically
occupied the doorway, while Alma already quivered
behind her with impatience of her impoliteness.

" Oh," said the lady, who began to appear more
and more a young lady, " Ah didn't know but Ah
had mistaken the ho'se. Ah suppose it 's rather
late to see the Apawtments, and Ah most ask you
to pawdon us." She put this tentatively, with a
delicately growing recognition of Mrs. Leighton as
the lady of the house, and a humorous intelligence
of the situation in the glance she threw Alma over
her mother's shoulder. " Ah 'm afraid we most
have frightened you."

" Oh, not at all." said Alma ; and at the same
time her mother said, " Will you walk in, please ? "

The gentleman promptly removed his hat and
made the Leigh tons an inclusive bo\v. " You awe
L

148 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

very kind, madam, and I am sorry for the trouble
we awe giving you." He was tall and severe-look-
ing, with a grey, trooperish moustache and iron-
grey hair, and, as Alma decided, iron-grey eyes.
His daughter was short, plump, and fresh-coloured,
with an effect of liveliness that did not all express
itself in her broad-vowelled, rather formal speech,
with its odd valuations of some of the auxiliary
verbs, and its total elision of the canine letter.

"We awe from the Soath," she said, "and we
arrived this mawning, but we got this cyahd from
the brokah just befo' dinnah, and so we awe rathah
late."

"Not at all; it's only nine o'clock," said Mrs.
Leighton, in condonation. She looked up from the
card the young lady had given her, and explained,
" We haven't got in our servants yet, and we had to
answer the bell ourselves, and "

" You were frightened, of coase," said the young
lady caressingly.

The gentleman said they ought not to have come
so late, and he offered some formal apologies.

"We should have been just as much scared any
time after five o'clock," Alma said to the sympathetic
intelligence in the girl's face.

She laughed out. " Of coase ! Ah would have
my hawt in my moath all day long too, if Ah was
living in a big hoase alone."

A moment of stiffness followed ; Mrs. Leighton
would have liked to withdraw from the intimacy of
the situation, but she did not know how. It was

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 149

very well for these people to assume to be what they
pretended ; but, she reflected too late, she had no
proof of it except the agent's permit. They were
all standing in the hall together, and she prolonged
the awkward pause while she examined the permit.
" You are Mr. Woodburn 1 " she asked, in a way
that Alma felt implied he might not be.

" Yes, madam ; from Charlottesboag, Virginia,"
he answered, with the slight umbrage a man shows
when the strange cashier turns his check over and
questions him before cashing it.

Alma writhed internally, but outwardly remained
subordinate ; she examined the other girl's dress,
and decided in a superficial consciousness that she
had made her own bonnet.

" I shall be glad to show you my rooms," said
Mrs Leighton, with an irrelevant sigh. " You must
excuse their being not just as I should wish them.
We 're hardly settled yet."

" Don't speak of it, madam," said the gentleman,
" if you can overlook the trouble we awe giving you
at such an unseasonable houah."

" Ah 'm a hoase-keepah mahself," Miss Woodburn
joined in, " and Ah know ho' to accyoant fo' every-
thing."

Mrs. Leighton led the way upstairs, and the
young lady decided upon the large front room and
small side-room on the third story. She said she
could take the small one, and the other was so large
that her father could both sleep and work in it.
She seemed not ashamed to ask if Mrs. Leighton's

150 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

price was inflexible, but gave way laughing when
her father refused to have any bargaining, with a
haughty self-respect which he softened to deference
for Mrs. Leighton. His impulsiveness opened the
way for some confidences from her, and before the
affair was arranged she was enjoying in her quality
of clerical widow the balm of the Virginians'
reverent sympathy. They said they were Church
people themselves.

" Ah don't know what yo' mothah means by yo'
hoase not being in oddah," the young lady said to
Alma, as they went downstairs together. " Ah 'm
u great hoase-keepah mahself, and Ah mean what
Ah say."

They had all turned mechanically into the room
where the Leightons were sitting when the Wood-
burns rang. Mr. Woodburn consented to sit down,
and he remained listening to Mrs. Leighton while
his daughter bustled up to the sketches pinned
round the room, and questioned Alma about them.

" Ah suppose you awe going to be a great aw-
tust?" she said, in friendly banter, when Alma owned
to having done the things. " Ah Ve a great notion to
take a few lessons mahself. Who 's yo' teachah ? "

Alma said she was drawing in Mr. Wetmore's
class, and Miss Woodburn said : " Well, it 's just
beautiful, Miss Leighton; it's grand. Ah suppose
it 's raght expensive, now ? Mali goodness ! we have
to cyoant the coast so much nowadays, it seems to
me we do nothing but cyoant it. Ah 'd like to bah
something once without askin' the price."

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 151

" Well, if you didn't ask it," said Alma, " I don't
believe Mr. Wetmore would ever know what the
price of his lessons was. He has to think, when
you ask him."

"Why, he most be chomming," said Miss Wood-
burn. "Perhaps Ah maght get the lessons for
nothing from him- Well, Ah believe in my soul
Ah '11 trah. Now ho' did you begin ? and ho' do
you expect to get anything oat of it 1 " She turned
on Alma eyes brimming with a shrewd mixture of
fun and earnest, and Alma made note of the fact
that she had an early nineteenth-century face,
round, arch, a little coquettish, but extremely sen-
sible and unspoiled-looking, such as used to be
painted a good deal in miniature at that period ; a
tendency of her brown hair to twine and twist at
the temples helped the effect ; a high comb would
have completed it, Alma felt, if she had her bonnet
off. It was almost a Yankee country-girl type ; but
perhaps it appeared so to Alma because it was, like
that, pure Anglo-Saxon. Alma herself, with her
dull dark skin, slender in figure, slow in speech,
with aristocratic forms in her long hands, and the
oval of her fine face pointed to a long chin, felt her-
self much more Southern in style than this bloom-
ing, bubbling, bustling Virginian.

"I don't know," she answered slowly.

" Going to take po'traits," suggested Miss Wood-
burn, " or just paint the ahdeal 1 " A demure bur-
lesque lurked in her tone.

"I suppose I don't expect to paint at all," said

152 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

Alma. "I 'm going to illustrate books — if anybody
will let me."

" Ah should think they 'd just joamp at you,"
said Miss Woodburn. "Ah '11 tell you what let 's do,
Miss Leighton : you make some pictures, and Ah '11
wrahte a book fo' them. Ah 've got to do some-
thing. Ah maght as well wrahte a book. You know
we Southerners have all had to go to woak. But
Ah don't mand it. I tell papa I shouldn't ca' fo'
the disgrace of bein' poo' if it wasn't fo' the incon-
venience."

" Yes, it 's inconvenient," said Alma ; " but you
forget it when you 're at work, don't you think ? "

" Mah, yes ! Perhaps that 's one reason why poo'
people have to woak so hawd — to keep their mands
off their poverty."

The girls both tittered, and turned from talking
in a low tone with their backs toward their elders,
and faced them.

"Well, Madison," said Mr. Woodburn, "it is
time we should go. I bid you good night, madam,"
he bowed to Mrs. Leighton. "Good night," he
bowed again to Alma.

His daughter took leave of them in formal phrase,
but with a jolly cordiality of manner that deforma-
lised it. "We shall be roand raght soon in the
mawning, then," she threatened at the door.

"We shall be all ready for you," Alma called
after her down the steps.

" Well, Alma 1 " her mother asked, when the door
closed upon them.

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 153

"She doesn't know any more about art" said
Alma, " than — nothing at all. But she 's jolly and
good-hearted. She praised everything that was bad
in my sketches, and said she was going to take
lessons herself. When a person talks about taking
lessons, as if they could learn it, you know where
they belong artistically."

Mrs. Leighton shook her head with a sigh. " I
wish I knew where they belonged financially. We
shall have to get in two girls at once. I shall have
to go out the first thing in the morning, and then
our troubles will begin."

"Well, didn't you want them to begin? I will
stay home and help you get ready. Our prosperity
couldn't begin without the troubles, if you mean
boarders, and boarders mean servants. I shall be
very glad to be afflicted with a cook for a while
myself."

" Yes ; but we don't know anything about these
people, or whether they will be able to pay us. Did
she talk as if they were well off ] "

" She talked as if they were poor ; poo' she called
it."

"Yes, how queerly she pronounced," said Mrs.
Leighton. " Well, I ought to have told them that I
required the first week in advance."

" Mamma ! If that 's the way you 're going to
act—

"Oh, of course, I couldn't, after he wouldn't let
her bargain for the rooms. I didn't Iike4,hat."

" / did. And you can see that they were perfect
7*

154 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

ladies ; or at least one of them." Alma laughed at
herself, but her mother did not notice.

" Their being ladies won't help if they Ve got no
money. It '11 make it all the worse."

" Very well, then ; we have no money, either.
We 're a match for them any day there. We can
show them that two can play at that game,"

III.

ANGUS BEATON'S studio looked at first glance like
many other painters' studios. A grey wall quad-
rangularly vaulted to a large north light ; casts of
feet, hands, faces hung to nails about ; prints,
sketches in oil and water-colour stuck here and
there lower down ; a rickety table, with paint and
palettes and bottles of varnish and siccative tossed
comfortlessly on it ; an easel, with a strip of some
faded mediaeval silk trailing from it ; a lay figure
simpering in incomplete nakedness, with its head on
one side, and a stocking on one leg, and a Japanese
dress dropped before it ; dusty rugs and skins kick-
ing over the varnished floor ; canvases faced to the
mop-board ; an open trunk overflowing with cos-
tumes : these features one might notice anywhere.
But besides there was a bookcase with an unusual
number of books in it, arid there was an open
colonial writing-desk, claw-footed, brass-handled, and
scutcheoned, with foreign periodicals — French and
English — littering its leaf, and some pages of manu-
script scattered among them. Above all, there was
a sculptor's revolving stand, supporting a bust which
Beaton was modelling, with an eye fixed as simul-

156 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

taneously as possible on the clay and on the head of
the old man who sat on the platform beside it.

Few men have been able to get through the
world with several gifts to advantage in all ; and
most men seem handicapped for the race if they
have more than one. But they are apparently
immensely interested as well as distracted by them.
When Beaton was writing, he would have agreed,
up to a certain point, with any one who said litera-
ture was his proper expression ; but then, when he
was painting, up to a certain point, he would have
maintained against the world that he was a colourist
and supremely a colourist. At the certain point in
either art he was apt to break away in a frenzy of
disgust, and wreak himself upon some other. In
these moods he sometimes designed elevations of
buildings, very striking, very original, very chic,
very everything but habitable. It was in this way
that he had tried his hand on sculpture, which he
had at first approached rather slightingly as a mere
decorative accessory of architecture. But it had
grown in his respect till he maintained that the ac-
cessory business ought to be all the other way : that
temples should be raised to enslmne statues, not
statues made to ornament temples ; that was putting
the cart before the horse with a vengeance. This
was when he had carried a plastic study so far that
the sculptors who saw it said that Beaton might
have been an architect, but would certainly never
be a sculptor. At the same time he did some
hurried, nervous things that had a popular charm,

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 157

and that sold in plaster reproductions, to the profit
of another. Beaton justly despised the popular
charm in these, as well as in the paintings he sold
from time to time ; he said it was flat burglary to
have taken money for them, and he would have
been living almost wholly upon the bounty of the old
tombstone-cutter in Syracuse if it had not been for
the syndicate letters which he supplied to Fulkerson
for ten dollars a week.

They were very well done, but he hated doing
them after the first two or three, and had to be
punched up for them by Fulkerson, who did not
•cease to prize them, and who never failed to punch
him up. Beaton being what he was, Fulkerson was
his creditor as well as patron ; and Fulkerson being
what he was, had an enthusiastic patience with the
•elusive, facile, adaptable, unpractical nature of
Beaton. He was very proud of his art-letters, as he
called them ; but then Fulkerson was proud of
•everything he secured for his syndicate. The fact
that he had secured it gave it value ; he felt as if he
had written it himself.

One art trod upon another's heels with Beaton.
The day before he had rushed upon canvas the con-
ception of a picture which he said to himself was
glorious, and to others (at the table d'hote of Maroni)
was not bad. He had worked at it in a fury till
^he light failed him, and he execrated the dying
-day. But he lit his lamp, and transferred the pro-
cess of his thinking from the canvas to the opening
of the syndicate letter which he knew Fulkerson

158 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

would be coming for in the morning. He remained
talking so long after dinner in the same strain as he
had painted and written in that he could not finish
his letter that night. The next morning, while he was
making his tea for breakfast, the postman brought him
a letter from his father enclosing a little cheque, and
begging him with tender, almost deferential, urgence
to come as lightly upon him as possible, for just now
his expenses were very heavy. It brought tears of
shame into Beaton's eyes — the fine smouldering, float-
ing eyes that many ladies admired, under the thick
bang — and he said to himself that if he were half a
man he would go home and go to work cutting grave-
stones in his father's shop. But he would wait, at
least, to finish his picture ; and as a sop to his con-
science, to stay its immediate ravening, he resolved to
finish that syndicate letter first, and borrow enough
money from Fulkerson to be able to send his father's
cheque back ; or if not that, then to return the sum of
it partly in Fulkerson's cheque. While he still teemed
with both of these good intentions the old man
frqm whom he was modelling his head of Judas
came, and Beaton saw that he must get through
with him before he finished either the picture or the
letter ; he would have to pay him for the time any-
way. He utilised the remorse with which he was
tingling to give his Judas an expression which he
found novel in the treatment of that character — a
look of such touching, appealing self-abhorrence that
Beaton's artistic joy in it amounted to rapture ;
between the breathless moments when he worked in

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 159

dead silence for an effect that was trying to escape
him, he sang and whistled fragments of comic opera.

In one of the hushes there came a blow on the
outside of the door that made Beaton jump, and
swear with a modified profanity that merged itself
I'n apostrophic prayer. He knew it must be Fulker-
son, and after roaring, " Come in ! " he said to the
model, " That '11 do this morning, Lindau."

Fulkerson squared his feet in front of the bust,
and compared it by fleeting glances with the old
man as he got stiffly up, and suffered Beaton to help
him on with his thin shabby overcoat.

" Can you come to-morrow, Lindau ? "

"No, not to-morrow, Mr. Peaton. I haf to zit
for the young lad ties."

" Oh ! " said Beaton. " Wetmore's class ? Is
Miss Leighton doing you ? "

" I don't know their namess," Lindau began,
when Fulkerson said

" Hope you haven't forgotten mine, Mr. Lindau ?
I met you with Mr. March at Maroni's one night."
Fulkerson offered him a universally shakable hand.

" Oh yes ! I am gladt to zee you again, Mr.
Vulkerzon. And Mr. Marge — he don't zeem to
gome any more ? "

" Up to his eyes in work. Been moving on from
Boston and getting settled, and starting in on our
enterprise. Beaton here hasn't got a very flattering
likeness of you, hey ? Well, good morning," he said,
for Lindau appeared not to have heard him, and was
escaping with a bow through the door.

160 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

Beaton lit a cigarette which he pinched nervously
between his lips before he spoke. " You 've come
for that letter, I suppose, Fulkerson ? It isn't done."

Fulkerson turned from staring at the bust to
which he had mounted. " What you fretting about
that letter for ? I don't want your letter."

Beaton stopped biting his cigarette, and looked at
him. " Don't want my letter ? Oh, very good ! "
he bristled up. He took his cigarette from his lips,
and blew the smoke through his nostrils, and then
looked at Fulkerson.

" No ; / don't want your letter ; I want you."
Beaton disdained to ask an explanation, but he
internally lowered his crest, while he continued to
look at Fulkerson without changing his defiant
countenance. This suited Fulkerson well enough,
and he went on with relish : " I 'm going out of the
syndicate business, old man, and I 'm on a new
thing." He put his leg over the back of a chair
and rested his foot on its seat, and with one hand
in his pocket, he laid the scheme of Every Other
Week before Beaton with the help of the other. The
artist went about the room, meanwhile, with an
effect of indifference which by no means offended
Fulkerson. He took some water into his mouth
from a tumbler, which he blew in a fine mist over
the head of Judas, before swathing it in a dirty
cotton cloth ; he washed his brushes and set his
palette ; he put up on his easel the picture he had
blocked on the day before, and stared at it with a
gloomy face ; then he gathered the sheets of his

I

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 161

unfinished letter together and slid them into a
drawer of his writing-desk. By the time he had
finished and turned again to Fulkerson, Fulkerson
was saying : " I did think we could have the first
number out by New- Year's ; but it will take longer
than that — a month longer ; but I 'm not sorry, for
the holidays kill everything ; and by February, or
the middle of February, people will get their breath
again, and begin to look round and ask what 's new.
Then we '11 reply in the language of Shakespeare and
Milton, Every Other Week ; and don't you forget it."
He took down his leg and asked, " Got a pipe of
'baccy anywhere ? "

Beaton nodded at a clay stem sticking out of a
Japanese vase of bronze on his mantel. "There's
yours," he said ; and Fulkerson said, " Thanks," and
filled the pipe, and sat down and began to smoke
tranquilly.

Beaton saw that he would have to speak now.
" And what do you want with me 1"

" You 1 Oh yes " Fulkerson humorously drama-
tised a return to himself from a pensive absence.
" Want you for the art department."

Beaton shook his head. " I 'm not your man,
Fulkerson," he said compassionately. " You want
a more practical hand; one that's in touch with
what 's going. I 'm getting further and further
away from this century and its claptrap. I don't
believe in your enterprise ; I don't respect it, and I
won't have anything to do with it. It would —
choke me, that kind of thing."

162 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

" That 's all right," said Fulkerson. He esteemed
a man who was not going to let himself go cheap.
" Or if it isn't, we can make it. You and March
will pull together first-rate. I don't care how much
ideal you put into the thing ; the more the better. I
can look after the other end of the schooner myself."

" You don't understand me," said Beaton. " I 'm
not trying to get a rise out of you. I 'm in earnest.
"What you want is some man who can have patience
with mediocrity putting on the style of genius, and
with genius turning mediocrity on his hands. I
haven't any luck with men ; I don't get on with
them; I'm not popular." Beaton recognised the
fact with the satisfaction which it somehow always
brings to human pride.

" So much the better ! " Fulkerson was ready for
him at this point. " I don't want you to work the
old established racket — the reputations. When I
want them I '11 go to them with a pocketful of rocks
— knock-down argument. But my idea is to deal
with the volunteer material. Look at the way the
periodicals are carried on now ! Names ! names !
names ! In a country that 's just boiling over with
literary and artistic ability of every kind the new
fellows have no chance. The editors all engage their
material. I don't believe there are fifty volunteer
contributions printed in a year in all the New York
magazines. It 's all wrong ; it 's suicidal. Evefry
Other Week is going back to the good old anonymous
system, the only fair system. It 's worked well in
literature, and it will work well in art"

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 16$

" It won't work well in art," said Beaton. " There
you have a totally different set of conditions. What
you '11 get by inviting volunteer illustrations will be
a lot of amateur trash. And how are you going to
submit your literature for illustration ? It can't be
done. At any rate, J won't undertake to do it."

" We '11 get up a School of Illustration," said
Fulkerson, with cynical security. " You can read
the things and explain 'em, and your pupils can
make their sketches under your eye. They wouldn't
be much further out than most illustrations are if
they never knew what they were illustrating. You
might select from what comes in and make up a sort
of pictorial variations to the literature without any
particular reference to it. Well, I understand you
to accept ? "

" No, you don't."

" That is, to consent to help us with your advice
and criticism. That 's all I want. It won't commit
you to anything ; and you can be as anonymous as
anybody." At the door Fulkerson added : " By the
way, the new man — the fellow that 's taken my old
syndicate business — will want you to keep on ; but
I guess he 's going to try to beat you down on the
price of the letters. He's going in for retrench-
ment. I brought along a cheque for this one ; I 'm
to pay for that." He offered Beaton an envelope.

" I can't take it, Fulkerson. The letter 's paid for
already." Fulkerson stepped forward and laid the
envelope on the table among the tubes of paint.

"It isn't the letter merely. I thought you
M

164 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

wouldn't object to a little advance on your Every
Other Week work till you kind of got started."

Beaton remained inflexible. " It can't be done,
Fulkerson. Don't I tell you I can't sell myself out
to a thing I don't believe in ? Can't you under-
stand that 1"

" Oh yes ; I can understand that first-rate. I
don't want to buy you ; I want to borrow you. It 's
all right. See 1 Come round when you can ; I 'd
like to introduce you to old March. That 's going
to be our address." He put a card on the table
beside the envelope, and Beaton allowed him to go
without making him take the cheque back. He had
remembered his father's plea ; that unnerved him,
and he promised himself again to return his father's
poor little cheque and to work on that picture and
give it to Fulkerson for the cheque he had left and
for his back debts. He resolved to go to work on
the picture at once ; he had set his palette for it ; but
first he looked at Fulkerson's cheque. It was for
only fifty dollars, and the canny Scotch blood in
Beaton rebelled ; he could not let this picture go for
any such money ; he felt a little like a man whose
generosity has been trifled with. The conflict of
emotions broke him up, and he could not work.

IV.

THE day wasted away in Beaton's hands ; at half-
past four o'clock he went out to tea at the house of
a lady who was At Home that afternoon from four
till seven. By this time Beaton was in possession
of one of those other selves, of which we each have
several about us, and was again the laconic, staccato,
rather worldlified young artist whose moments of
a controlled utterance and a certain distinction of
manner had commended him to Mrs. Horn's fancy
in the summer at St. Barnaby.

Mrs. Horn's rooms were large, and they never
seemed very full, though this perhaps was because
people were always so quiet. The ladies, who out-
numbered the men ten to one, as they always do at
a New York tea, were dressed in sympathy with
the low tone every one spoke in, and with the sub-
dued light which gave a crepuscular uncertainty to
the few objects, the dim pictures, the unexcited up-
holstery, of the rooms. One breathed free of bric-a
brae there, and the new-comer breathed softly as one
does on going into church after service has begun.
This might be a suggestion from the voiceless be
haviour of the man-servant who let you in, but it

166 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

was also because Mrs. Horn's At Home was a cere-
mony, a decorum, and not festival. At far greater
houses there was more gaiety, at richer houses there
was more freedom ; the suppression at Mrs. Horn's
was a personal, not a social, effect ; it was an efflux
of her character, demure, silentious, vague, but very
correct.

Beaton easily found his way to her around the
grouped skirts and among the detached figures, and
received a pressure of welcome from the hand which
she momentarily relaxed from the teapot. She sat
behind a table put crosswise of a remote corner, and
offered tea to people whom a niece of hers received
provisionally or sped finally in the outer room.
They did not usually take tea, and when they did
they did not usually drink it; but Beaton was
feverishly glad of his cup ; he took rum and lemon
in it, and stood talking at Mrs. Horn's side till the
next arrival should displace him : he talked in his
French manner.

"I have been hoping to see you," she said. "I
wanted to ask you about the Leightons. Did they
really come ? "

" I believe so. They are in town — yes. I haven't
seen them."

" Then you don't know how they 're getting on —
that pretty creature, with her cleverness, and poor
Mrs. Leighton 1 I was afraid they were venturing on
a rash experiment. Do you know where they are ? "

"In West Eleventh Street somewhere. Miss
Leighton is in Mr. Wetmore's class."

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 167

" I must look them up. Do you know their
number 1 "

"Not at the moment. I can find out."

" Do," said Mrs. Horn. " What courage they
must have, to plunge into New York as they've
done ! I really didn't think they would. I wonder
if they Ve succeeded in getting anybody into their
house yet 1 "

" I don't know," said Beaton.

"I discouraged their coming all I could," she
sighed, "and I suppose you did too. But it's quite
useless trying to make people in a place like St.
Barnaby understand how it is in town."

"Yes," said Beaton. He stirred his tea, while
inwardly he tried to believe that he had really
discouraged the Leightons from coming to New
York. Perhaps the vexation of his failure made
him call Mrs. Horn in his heart a fraud.

"Yes," she went on. "It is very, very hard.
And when they won't understand, and rush on
their doom, you feel that they are going to hold you
respons "

Mrs. Horn's eyes wandered from Beaton; her
voice faltered in the faded interest of her remark,
and then rose with renewed vigour in greeting a
lady who came up and stretched her glove across
the teacups.

Beaton got himself away and out of the house
with a much briefer adieu to the niece than he had
meant to make. The patronising compassion of
Mrs. Horn for the Leicjhtons filled him with mdigrna-

168 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

tion toward her, toward himself. There was no
reason why he should not have ignored them as he
had done ; but there was a feeling. It was his
nature to be careless, and he had been spoiled into
recklessness ; he neglected everybody, and only
remembered them when it suited his whim or his
convenience ; but he fiercely resented the inatten-
tion of others toward himself. He had no scruple
about breaking an engagement or failing to keep an
appointment ; he made promises without thinking
of their fulfilment, and not because he was a faith-
less person, but because he was imaginative, and
expected at the time to do what he said, but was
fickle, and so did not. As most of his shortcomings
were of a society sort, no great harm was done to
anybody else. He had contracted somewhat the
circle of his acquaintance by what some people
called his rudeness, but most people treated it as his
oddity, and were patient with it. One lady said
she valued his coming when he said he would come
because it had the charm of the unexpected. "Only
it shows that it isn't always the unexpected that
happens," she explained.

It did not occur to him that his behaviour was
immoral ; he did not realise that it was creating a
reputation if not a character for him. While we
are still young we do not realise that our actions
have this effect. It seems to us that people will
judge us from what we think and feel. Later we
find out that this is impossible ; perhaps we find it
out too late ; some of us never find it out at all.

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 169

In spite of his shame about the Leightons Beaton
had no present intention of looking them up or
sending Mrs. Horn their address. As a matter of
fact, he never did send it ; but he happened to meet
Mr. Wetmore and his wife at the restaurant where
he dined, and he got it of the painter for himself.
He did not ask him how Miss Leighton was getting
on ; but Wetmore launched out, with Alma for a
tacit text, on the futility of women generally going
in for art. " Even when they have talent they Ve
got too much against them. Where a girl doesn't
seem very strong, like Miss Leighton, no amount of
chic is going to help."

His wife disputed him on behalf of her sex, as
women always do.

" No, Dolly," he persisted ; " she 'd better be
home milking the cows and leading the horse to
water."

" Do you think she 'd better be up till two in the
morning at balls and going all day to receptions and
luncheons 1 "

" Oh, I guess it isn't a question of that, even if
she weren't drawing. You knew them at home," he
said to Beaton.

" Yes."

" I remember. Her mother said you suggested
me. Well, the girl has some notion of it ; there 's
no doubt about that. But — she's a woman. The
trouble with these talented girls is that they 're all
woman. If they weren't, there wouldn't be much
chance for the men, Beaton. But we Ve got Provi-
VOL. I.— 8

170 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

dence on our own side from the start. I 'm able to
watch all their inspirations with perfect composure.
I know just how soon it 's going to end in nervous
breakdown. Somebody ought to marry them all
and put them out of their misery."

" And what will you do with your students who
are married already 1 " his wife said. She felt that
she had let him go on long enough.

" Oh, they ought to get divorced."

" You ought to be ashamed to take their money if
that's what you think of them."

" My dear, I have a wife to support."

Beaton intervened with a question. " Do you
mean that Miss Leighton isn't standing it very well 1 "

" How do I know ? She isn't the kind that
bends ; she 's the kind that breaks."

After a little silence Mrs. Wetmore asked, " Won't
you come home with us, Mr. Beaton ? "

" Thank you ; no. I have an engagement."

" I don't see why that should prevent you," said
Wetmore. " But you always were a punctilious cuss.
Well ! "

Beaton lingered over his cigar ; but no one else
whom he knew came in, and he yielded to the three-
fold impulse of conscience, of curiosity, of inclina-
tion, in going to call at the Leightons'. He asked
for the ladies, and the maid showed him into the
parlour, where he found Mrs. Leighton and Miss
Wood burn.

The widow met him with a welcome neatly
marked by resentment ; she meant him to feel that

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 171

his not coining sooner had been noticed. Miss
Woodburn bubbled and gurgled on, and did what
she could to mitigate his punishment, but she did
not feel authorised to stay it, till Mrs. Leighton, by
studied avoidance of her daughter's name, obliged
Beaton to ask for her. Then Miss Woodburn caught
up her work, and said, " Ah '11 go and tell her, Mrs.
Leighton." At the top of the stairs she found Alma,
and Alma tried to make it seem as if she had not
been standing there. " Mali goodness, chald ! there 's
the handsomest young man asking for you down
there you evah saw. Ah told you' mothah Ah
would come up fo' you."

" What— who is it t "

" Don't you know 1 But ho' could you 1 He 's
got the most beautiful eyes, and he wea's his hai' in
a bang, and he talks English like it was something
else, and his name 's Mr. Beaton."

" Did he — ask for me ? " said Alma, with a
dreamy tone. She put her hand on the stairs rail,
and a little shiver ran over her.

" Didn't I tell you 1 Of coase he did ! And you
ought to go raght down if you want to save the poo'
fellah's lahfe ; you' mothah's just freezin' him to
death."

V.

"SHE is;" cried Alma. "Tchk!" She flew down-
stairs, and flitted swiftly into the room, and fluttered
up to Beaton, and gave him a crushing hand-shake.

" How very kind of you to come and see us, Mr.
Beaton ! When did you come to New York ? Don't
you find it warm here ? We 've only just lighted
the furnace, but with this mild weather it seems too
early. Mamma does keep it so hot !" She rushed
about opening doors and shutting registers, and then
came back and sat facing him from the sofa with a
mask of radiant cordiality. " How have you been
since we saw you 1"

"Very well," said Beaton. "I hope you're well,
Miss Leighton ?"

" Oh, perfectly ! I think New York agrees with
us both wonderfully. I never knew such air. And
to think of our not having snow yet ! I should
think everybody would want to come here ! Why
don't you come, Mr. Beaton ? "

Beaton lifted his eyes and looked at her. " I — I
live in New York," he faltered.

" In New York city / " she exclaimed.

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 173

" Surely, Alma," said her mother, " you remember
Mr. Beaton's telling us he lived in New York."

" But I thought you came from Rochester ; or
was it Syracuse 1 I always get those places mixed
up."

" Probably I told you my father lived at Syracuse.
I Ve been in New York ever since I came home from
Paris," said Beaton, with the confusion of a man
who feels himself played upon by a woman.

" From Paris ! " Alma echoed, leaning forward,
with her smiling mask tight on. " Wasn't it
Munich, where you studied 1 "

" I was at Munich too. I met Wetmore there."

" Oh, do you know Mr. Wetmore 1 "

" Why, Alma," her mother interposed again, " it
was Mr. Beaton who told you of Mr. Wetmore."

"Was it? Why, yes, to be sure. It was Mrs.
Horn ; she suggested Mr. Ilcomb. I remember now.
I can't thank you enough for having sent me to Mr.
Wetmore, Mr. Beaton. Isn't he delightful? Oh
yes, I'm a perfect Wetmorian, I can assure you.
The whole class is the same way."

" I just met him and Mrs. Wetmore at dinner,"
said Beaton, attempting the recovery of something
that he had lost through the girl's shining ease and
steely sprightliness. She seemed to him so smooth
and hard, with a repellent elasticity from which he
was flung off. " I hope you 're not working too
hard, Miss Leighton ? "

" Oh no ! I enjoy every minute of it, and grow
stronger on it. Do I look very much wasted away ? "

174 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

She looked him full in the face, brilliantly smiling,
and intentionally beautiful.

" No," he said, with a slow sadness ; " I never
saw you looking better."

" Poor Mr. Beaton ! " she said, in recognition of
his doleful tune. " It seems to be quite a blow."

" Oh no "

" I remember all the good advice you used to give
me about not working too hard, and probably it's
that that 's saved my life — that and the house-hunt-
ing. Has mamma told you of our adventures in get-
ting settled 1 Some time we must. It was such fun !
And didn't you think we were fortunate to get such
a pretty house ? You must see both our parlours."

She jumped up, and her mother followed her with
a bewildered look as she ran into the back parlour
and flashed up the gas.

" Come in here, Mr. Beaton. I want to show you
the great feature of the house." She opened the low
windows that gave upon a glazed veranda stretching
across the end of the room. " Just think of this in
New York ! You can't see it very well at night, but
when the southern sun pours in here all the after-
noon "

" Yes, I can imagine it," he said. He glanced up
at the bird-cage hanging from the roof. " I suppose
Gypsy enjoys it."

" You remember Gypsy ? " she said ; and she
made a cooing, kissing little noise up at the bird,
who responded drowsily. " Poor old Gypsum !
"Well, he shan't be disturbed. Yes, it's Gyp's de-

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 175

light, and Colonel Woodburn likes to write here in
the morning. Think of us having a real live author
in the house ! And Miss Woodburn : I ;m so glad
you Ve seen her ! They 're Southern people."

" Yes, that was obvious in her case."

" From her accent ? Isn't it fascinating ? I didn't
believe I could ever endure Southerners, but we 're
like one family with the Woodburns. I should
think you 'd want to paint Miss Woodburn. Don't
you think her colouring is delicious ? And such a
quaint kind of eighteenth-century type of beauty !
But she's perfectly lovely every way, and every-
thing she says is so funny. The Southerners seem
to be such great talkers ; better than we are, don't
you think ? "

" I don't know," said Beaton, in pensive dis-
couragement. He was sensible of being manipu-
lated, operated, but he was helpless to escape from
the performer or to fathom her motives. His
pensiveness passed into gloom, and was degenerat-
ing into sulky resentment when he went away,
after several failures to get back to the old ground
he had held in relation to Alma. He retrieved
something of it with Mrs. Leighton; but Alma
glittered upon him to the last with a keen impene-
trable candour, a childlike singleness of glance,
covering unfathomable reserve.

"Well, Alma," said her mother, when the door
had closed upon him.

" Well, mother." Then, after a moment, she said,
with a rush : " Did you think I was going to let him

176 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

suppose we were piqued at his not coming? Did
you suppose I was going to let him patronise us, or
think that we were in the least dependent on his
favour or friendship ? "

Her mother did not attempt to answer her. She
merely said, " I shouldn't think he would come any
more."

" Well, we have got on so far without him ; per-
haps we can live through the rest of the winter."

" I couldn't help feeling sorry for him. He was
quite stupefied. I could see that he didn't know
what to make of you."

" He 's not required to make anything of me,"
said Alma.

" Do you think he really believed you had for-
gotten all those things ? "

" Impossible to say, mamma."

" Well, I don't think it was quite right, Alma."

" I '11 leave him to you the next time. Miss
Woodburn said you were freezing him to death
when I came down."

" That was quite* different. But there won't be
any next time, I 'm afraid," sighed Mrs. Leighton.

Beaton went home feeling sure there would not.
He tried to read when he got to his room ; but
Alma's looks, tones, gestures, whirred through and
through the woof of the story like shuttles ; he
could not keep them out, and he fell asleep at last,
not because he forgot them, but because he forgave
them. He was able to say to himself that he had
been justly cut off from kindness which he knew

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 177

how to value in losing it. He did not expect ever
to right himself in Alma's esteem ; but he hoped
some day to let her know that he had understood.
It seemed to him that it would be a good thing
if she should find it out after his death. He ima-
gined her being touched by it under those circum-
stances.
8*

VI.

IN the morning it seemed to Beaton that he had
done himself injustice. "When he uncovered his
Judas and looked at it, he could not believe that
the man who was capable of such work deserved the
punishment Miss Leighton had inflicted upon him.
He still forgave her, but in the presence of a thing
like that he could not help respecting himself ; he
believed that if she could see it she would be sorry
that she had cut herself off from his acquaintance.
He carried this strain of conviction all through his
syndicate letter, which he now took out of his desk
and finished, with an increasing security of his
opinions and a mounting severity in his judgments.
He retaliated upon the general condition of art
among us the pangs of wounded vanity, which Alma
had. made him feel, and he folded up his manuscript
and put it in his pocket, almost healed of his humi-
liation. He had been able to escape from its sting
so entirely while he was writing that the notion of
making his life more and more literary commended
itself to him. As it was now evident that the
future was to be one of renunciation, of self-forget-
ting, an oblivion tinged with bitterness, he formlesslj

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 179

reasoned in favour of reconsidering his resolution
against Fulkerson's offer. One must call it reason-
ing, but it was rather that swift internal dramatisa-
tion which constantly goes on in persons of excitable
sensibilities, and which now seemed to sweep
Beaton physically along toward the Every Other
Week office, and carried his mind with lightning
celerity on to a time when he should have given
that journal such quality and authority in matters
of art as had never been enjoyed by any in America
before. With the prosperity which he made attend
his work he changed the character of the enterprise,
and with Fulkerson's enthusiastic support he gave
the public an art journal of as high grade as Les
Lettres et les Arts, and very much that sort of thing.
All this involved now the unavailing regret of Alma
Leighton, and now his reconciliation with her : they
were married in Grace Church, because Beaton had
once seen a marriage there, and had intended to
paint a picture of it some time.

Nothing in these fervid fantasies prevented his
responding with due dryness to Fulkerson's cheery
" Hello, old man ! " when he found himself in the
building fitted up for the Every Other Week office.
Fulkerson's room was back of the smaller one
occupied by the book-keeper ; they had been respec-
tively the reception-room and dining-room of the
little place in its dwelling-house days, and they had
been simply and tastefully treated in their trans-
formation into business purposes. The narrow old
trim of the doors and windows had been kept, and
N

180 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

the quaintly ugly marble mantels. The architect
had said, Better let them stay : they expressed
epoch, if not character.

" Well, have you come round to go to work ? Just
hang up your coat on the floor anywhere," Fulkerson
went on.

" I Ve come to bring you that letter," said Beaton,
all the more haughtily because he found that
Fulkerson was not alone when he welcomed him in
these free and easy terms. There was a quiet-look-
ing man, rather stout, and a little above the middle
height, with a full, close-cropped iron-grey beard,
seated beyond the table where Fulkerson tilted him-
self back, with his knees set against it ; and leaning
against the mantel there was a young man with a
singularly gentle face, in which the look of goodness
qualified and transfigured a certain simplicity. His
large blue eyes were somewhat prominent ; and his
rather narrow face was drawn forward in a nose a
little too long perhaps, if it had not been for the full
chin deeply cut below the lip, and jutting firmly
forward.

"Introduce you to Mr. March, our editor, Mr.
Beaton," Fulkerson said, rolling his head in the
direction of the elder man ; and then nodding it
toward the younger, he said, " Mr. Dryfoos, Mr.
Beaton." Beaton shook hands with March, and
then with Mr. Dryfoos, and Fulkerson went on
gaily : " We were just talking of you, Beaton —
well, you know the old saying. Mr. March, as I
told you, is our editor, and Mr. Dryfoos has charge

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 181

of the publishing department — he's the counting-
room incarnate, the source of power, the fountain of
corruption, the element that prevents journalism
being the high and holy thing that it would be if
there were no money in it." Mr. Dryfoos turned
his large mild eyes upon Beaton, and laughed with
the uneasy concession which people make to a
character when they do not quite approve of the
character's language. " What Mr. March and I are
trying to do is to carry on this thing so that there
won't be any money in it — or very little ; and we 're
planning to give the public a better article for the
price than it 's ever had before. Now here 's a
dummy we've had made up for Every Other Week,
and as we 've decided to adopt it, we would naturally
like your opinion of it, so 's to know what opinion
to have of you." He reached forward and pushed
toward Beaton a volume a little above the size of the
ordinary duodecimo book; its ivory white pebbled
paper cover was prettily illustrated with a water-
coloured design irregularly washed over the greater
part of its surface : quite across the page at top, and
narrowing from right to left as it descended. In the
triangular space left blank the title of the periodical
and the publisher's imprint were tastefully lettered
so as to be partly covered by the background of
colour.

" It 's like some of those Tartarin books of Dau-
det's," said Beaton, looking at it with more interest
than he suffered to be seen. "But it's a book, not
a magazine." He opened its pages of thick mellow

182 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

white paper, with uncut leaves, the first few pages
experimentally printed in the type intended to be
used, and illustrated with some sketches drawn into
and over the text, for the sake of the effect.

" A Daniel — a Daniel come to judgment ! Sit
down, Dan'el, and take it easy." Fulkerson pushed a
chair toward Beaton, who dropped into it. " You 're
right, Dan'el ; it 's a book, to all practical intents
and purposes. And what we propose to do with the
American public is to give it twenty-four books like
this a year — a complete library — for the absurd sum
of six dollars. We don't intend to sell 'em — it 's no
name for the transaction — but to give Jem. And
what we want to get out of you — beg, borrow, buy,
or steal from you — is an opinion whether we shall
make the American public this princely present in
paper covers like this, or in some sort of flexible
boards, so they can set them on the shelf and say no
more about it. Now, Dan'el, come to judgment, as
our respected friend -Shylock remarked."

Beaton had got done looking at the dummy, and
he dropped it on the table before Fulkerson, who
pushed it away, apparently to free himself from
partiality. " I don't know anything about the
business side, and I can't tell about the effect of
either style on the sales ; but you '11 spoil the whole
character of the cover if you use anything thicker
than that thickish paper."

" All right ; very good ; first-rate. The ayes have
it. Paper it is. I don't mind telling you that we
had decided for that paper before you came in. Mr.

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 183

March wanted it, because he felt in his bones just
the way you do about it, and Mr. Dryfoos wanted
it, because he 's the counting-room incarnate, and
it's cheaper; and I wanted it, because I always like
to go with the majority. Now what do you think
of that little design itself ? "

" The sketch 1 " Beaton pulled the book toward
him again and looked at it again. " Rather decora-
tive. Drawing 's not remarkable. Graceful ; rather
nice." He pushed the book away again, and Fulker-
son pulled it to his side of the table.

" Well, that 's a piece of that amateur trash you
despise so much. I went to a painter I know — by
the way, he was guilty of suggesting you for this
thing, but I told him I was ahead of him — and I
got him to submit my idea to one of his class, and
that's the result. Well, now, there ain't anything
in this world that sells a book like a pretty cover,
and we 're going to have a pretty cover for Every
Other Week every time. We 've cut loose from the
old traditional quarto literary newspaper size, and
we've cut loose from the old two-column big page
magazine size ; we 're going to have a duodecimo
page, clear black print, and paper that'll make your
mouth water; and we're going to have a fresh
illustration for the cover of each number, and we
ain't a-going to give the public any rest at all.
Sometimes we're going to have a delicate little
landscape like this, and sometimes we're going to
have an indelicate little figure, or as much so as the
law will allow."

184 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

The young man leaning against the mantelpiece
blushed a sort of protest.

March smiled and said dryly, "Those are the
numbers that Mr. Fulkerson is going to edit himself."

"Exactly. And Mr. Beaton here is going to
supply the floating females, gracefully airing them-
selves against a sunset or something of that kind."
Beaton frowned in embarrassment, while Fulkerson
went on philosophically. "It's astonishing how
you fellows can keep it up at this stage of the pro-
ceedings ; you can paint things that your harshest
critic would be ashamed to describe accurately;
you're as free as the theatre. But that's neither
here nor there. What I'm after is the fact that
we 're going to have variety in our title-pages, and
we are going to have novelty in the illustrations of
the body of the book. March, here, if he had his
own way, wouldn't have any illustrations at all."

"Not because I don't like them, Mr. Beaton,"
March interposed, " but because I like them too much.
I find that I look at the pictures in an illustrated
article, but I don't read the article very much, and I
fancy that 's the case with most other people. You've
got to doing them so prettily that you take our eyes
off the literature, if you don't take our minds off."

" Like the society beauties on the stage : people
go in for the beauty so much that they don't know
what the play is. But the box office gets there all
the same, and that's what Mr. Dryfoos wants."
Fulkerson looked up gaily at Mr. Dryfoos, who
smiled deprecatingly.

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 185

"It was different," March went on, "when the
illustrations used to be bad. Then the text had
some chance."

"Old legitimate drama days, when ugliness and
genius combined to storm the galleries," said Ful-
kerson.

" We can still make them bad enough," said
Beaton, ignoring Fulkerson in his remark to March.

Fulkerson took the reply upon himself. " Well,
you needn't make 'em so bad as the old-style cuts ;
but you can make them unobtrusive, modestly re-
tiring. We Ve got hold of a process something like
that those French fellows gave Daudet thirty-five
thousand dollars to write a novel to use with ; kind
of thing that begins at one side, or one corner, and
spreads in a sort of dim religious style over the
print till you can't tell which is which. Then we Ve
got a notion that where the pictures don't behave
quite so sociably, they can be dropped into the text,
like a little casual remark, don't you know, or a
comment that has some connection, or may be none
at all, with what's going on in the story. Some-
thing like this." Fulkerson took away one knee
from the table long enough to open the drawer, and
pull from it a book that he shoved toward Beaton.
" That 's a Spanish book I happened to see at Bren-
tano's, and I froze to it on account of the pictures.
I guess they 're pretty good."

" Do you expect to get such drawings in this
country ? " asked Beaton, after a glance at the book.
" Such character — such drama ? You won't"

186 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

""Well, I'm not so sure," said Fulkerson, "come
to get our amateurs warmed up to the work. But-
what I want is to get the physical effect, so to speak
— get that-sized picture into our page, and set the
fashion of it. I shouldn't care if the illustration
was sometimes confined to an initial letter and a
tail-piece."

" Couldn't be done here. We haven't the touch.
We 're good in some things, but this isn't in our
way," said Beaton stubbornly. " I can't think of a
man who could do it ; that is, amongst those that
would."

" Well, think of some woman, then," said Fulker-
son easily. "I've got a notion that the women
could help us out on this thing, come to get 'em
interested. There ain't anything so popular as.
female fiction ; why not try female art 1 "

" The females themselves have been supposed to
have been trying it for a good while," March sug-
gested ; and Mr. Dryf oos laughed nervously ; Beaton
remained solemnly silent.

"Yes, I know," Fulkerson assented. "But I
don't mean that kind exactly. What we want to
do is to work the ewig WeiUiche in this concern.
We want to make a magazine that will go for the
women's fancy every time. I don't mean with
recipes for cooking and fashions and personal gossip
about authors and society, but real high-tone litera-
ture that will show women triumphing in all the
stories, or else suffering tremendously. We 've got
to recognise that women form three-fourths of the

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 1*87

reading public in this country, and go for their
tastes and ttyeir sensibilities and their sex-piety
along the whole line. They do like to think that
women can do things better than men ; and if we
can let it leak out and get around in the papers that
the managers of Every Other Week couldn't stir a peg
in the line of the illustration they wanted till they
got a lot of God-gifted girls to help them, it '11 make
the fortunes of the thing. See 1 "

He looked sunnily round at the other men, and
March said : " You ought to be in charge of a
Siamese white elephant, Fulkerson. It 's a disgrace
to be connected with you."

" It seems to me," said Beaton, " that you 'd better
get a God-gifted girl for your art editor."

Fulkerson leaned alertly forward, and touched
him on the shoulder, with a compassionate smile.
"My dear boy, they haven't got the genius of
organisation. It takes a very masculine man for
that — a man who combines the most subtle and
refined sympathies with the most forceful purposes
and the most ferruginous will power. Which his
name is Angus Beaton, and here he sets ! "

The others laughed with Fulkerson at his gross
burlesque of flattery, and Beaton frowned sheepishly.
" I suppose you understand this man's style," he
growled toward March.

" They do, my son," said Fulkerson. " They
know that I cannot tell a lie." He pulled out his
watch, and then got suddenly upon his feet.

" It 's quarter of twelve, and I 've got an appoint-

188 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

ment. Beaton rose too, and Fulkerson put the
two books in his lax hands. " Take these along,
Michelangelo Da Vinci, my friend, and put your
multitudinous mind on them for about an hour,
and let us hear from you to-morrow. We hang
upon your decision."

" There 's no deciding to be done," said Beaton.
"You can't combine the two styles. They'd kill
each other."

" A Dan'el, a Dan'el come to judgment ! I knew
you could help us out ! Take 'em along, and tell us
which will go the furthest with the ewig Weibliche.
Dryfoos, I want a word with you." He led the way
into the front room, flirting an airy farewell to
Beaton with his hand as he went.

VII.

MARCH and Beaton remained alone together for a
moment, and March said : " I hope you will think
it worth while to take hold with us, Mr. Beaton.
Mr. Fulkerson puts it in his own way, of course ;
but we really want to make a nice thing of the
magazine." He had that timidity of the elder in
the presence of the younger man which the younger,
preoccupied with his own timidity in the presence of
the elder, cannot imagine. Besides, March was aware
of the gulf that divided him as a literary man from
Beaton as an artist, and he only ventured to feel his
way toward sympathy with him. " We want to
make it good ; we want to make it high. Fulker-
son is right about aiming to please the women, bub
of course he caricatures the way of going about it."

For answer, Beaton flung out, " I can't go in for
a thing I don't understand the plan of."

March took it for granted that he had wounded
some exposed sensibility of Beaton's. He continued
still more deferentially : " Mr. Fulkerson's notion — •
I must say the notion is his, evolved from his syndi-
cate experience — is that we shall do best in fiction
to confine ourselves to short stories, and make each

190 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

number complete in itself. He found that the most
successful things he could furnish his newspapers
were short stories ; we Americans are supposed to
excel in writing them ; and most people begin with
them in fiction ; and it 's Mr. Fulkerson's idea to
work unknown talent, as he says, and so he thinks
he can not only get them easih', but can gradually
form a school of short-story writers. I can't say I
follow him altogether, but I respect his experience.
We shall not despise translations of short stories,
but otherwise the matter will all be original, and of
course it won't all be short stories. We shall use
sketches of travel, and essays, and little dramatic
studies, and bits of biography and history ; but all
very light, and always short enough to be completed
in a single number. Mr. Fulkerson believes in pic-
tures, and most of the things would be capable of
illustration."

" I see," said Beaton.

" I don't know but this is the whole affair," said
March, beginning to stiffen a little at the young
man's reticence.

" I understand. Thank you for taking the trouble
to explain. Good morning." Beaton bowed him-
self off, without offering to shake hands.

Fulkerson came in after a while from the outer
office, and Mr. Dryfoos followed him. fi Well, what
do you think of our art editor ? "

" Is he our art editor ? " asked March. " I wasn't
quite certain when he left."

" Did he take the books ? "

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 191

" Yes, he took the books."

" I guess he 's all right, then." Fulkerson added,
in concession to the umbrage he detected in March,
" Beaton has his times of being the greatest ass in
the solar system, but he usually takes it out in per-
sonal conduct. When it comes to work, he's a
regular horse."

" He appears to have compromised for the present
by being a perfect mule," said March.

" Well, he 's in a transition state," Fulkerson
allowed. " He 's the man for us. He really under-
stands what we want. You '11 see ; he '11 catch on.
That lurid glare of his will wear off in the course of
time. He 's really a good fellow when you take him
off his guard ; and he 's full of ideas. He 's spread
out over a good deal of ground at present, and so he 's
pretty thin ; but come to gather him up into a lump,
there 's a good deal of substance to him. Yes, there
is. He 's a first-rate critic, and he 's a nice fellow
with the other artists. They laugh at his univer-
sality, but they all like him. He 's the best kind of
a teacher when he condescends to it ; and he 's just
the man to deal with our volunteer work. Yes, sir,
he's a prize. Well, I must go now."

Fulkerson went out of the street door and then
came quickly back. "By-the-by, March, I saw that
old dynamiter of yours round at Beaton's room
yesterday."

" What old dynamiter of mine ? "

" That old one-handed Dutchman — friend of your
youth — the one we saw at Maroni's "

192 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

" Oh — Lindau ! " said March, with a vague pang
of self-reproach for having thought of Lindau so
little after the first flood of his tender feeling toward
him was past

" Yes, our versatile friend was modelling him as
Judas Iscariot. Lindau makes a first-rate Judas,
and Beaton has got a big thing in that head if he
works the religious people right. But what I was
thinking of was this — it struck me just as I was
going out of the door : Didn't you tell me Lindau
knew forty or fifty different languages 1 "

" Four or five, yes."

" Well, we won't quarrel about the number. The
question is, why not work him in the field of foreign
literature ? You can't go over all their reviews and
magazines, and he could do the smelling for you, if
you could trust his nose. Would he know a good
thing?"

" I think he would," said March, on whom the
scope of Fulkerson's suggestion gradually opened.
"He used to have good taste, and he must know
the ground. Why, it 's a capital idea, Fulkerson !
Lindau wrote very fair English, and he could trans-
late, with a little revision."

"And he would probably work cheap. Well,
hadn't you better see him about it ? I guess it '11
be quite a windfall for him."

" Yes, it will. I '11 look him up. Thank you for
the suggestion, Fulkerson."

" Oh, don't mention it ! /don't mind doing Every
Other Week a good, turn now and then when it comes

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 193

in my way." Fulkerson went out again, and this
time March was finally left with Mr. Dryfoos.

" Mrs. March was very sorry not to be at home
when your sisters called the other day. She wished
me to ask if they had any afternoon in particular.
There was none on your mother's card."

" No, sir," said the young man, with a flush of
embarrassment that seemed habitual with him.
" She has no day. She 's at home almost every day
She hardly ever goes out."

" Might we come some evening ? " March asked.
" We should be very glad to do that, if she would
excuse the informality. Then I could come with
Mrs. March."

" Mother isn't very formal," said the young man.
" She would be very glad to see you."

"Then we'll come some night this week, if you
will let us. "When do you expect your father back ? "

"Not much before Christmas. He's trying to
settle up some things at Moffitt."

" And what do you think of our art editor ? " asked
March, with a smile, for the change of subject.

"Oh, I don'J know much about such things," said
the young man, with another of his embarrassed
flushes. " Mr. Tulkerson seems to feel sure that he
is the one for us."

" Mr. Fulkerson seemed to think that / was the
one for you, too," said March; and he laughed.
" That 's what makes me doubt his infallibility. But
he couldn't do worse with Mr. Beaton."

Mr. Dryfoos reddened and looked down, as if
VOL. I.— 9

194 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

unable or unwilling to cope with the difficulty of
making a polite protest against March's self-de-
preciation. He said after a moment: "It's new
business to all of us except Mr. Fulkerson. But I
think it will succeed. I think we can do some good
in it."

March asked rather absently, " Some good?" Then
he added : " Oh yes ; I think we can. What do
you mean by good ? Improve the public taste 1
Elevate the standard of literature 1 Give young
authors and artists a chance 1 "

This was the only good that had ever been in
March's mind, except the good that was to come in
a material way from his success, to himself and to
his family.

" I don't know," said the young man ; and he
looked down in a shamefaced fashion. He lifted his
, head and looked into March's face. " I suppose I
was thinking that some time we might help along.
If we were to have those sketches of yours about life
in every part of New York "

March's authorial vanity was tickled. " Fulkerson
has been talking to you about them ? He seemed
to think they would be a card. He believes that
there 's no subject so fascinating to the general
average of people throughout the country as life in
New York City ; and he liked my notion of doing
these things." March hoped that Dryfoos would
answer that Fulkerson was perfectly enthusiastic
about his notion ; but he did not need this stimulus,
and at any rate he went on without it. " The fact
is, it 's something that struck my fancy the moment

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 195

I came here ; I found myself intensely interested in
the place, and I began to make notes, consciously
and unconsciously, at once. Yes, I believe I can
get something quite attractive out of it. I don't in
the least know what it will be yet, except that it
will be very desultory ; and I couldn't at all say
when I can get at it. If we postpone the first
number till February I might get a little paper into
that. Yes, I think it might be a good thing for us,"
March said, with modest self-appreciation.

" If you can make the comfortable people under-
stand how the uncomfortable people live, it will be
a very good thing, Mr. March. Sometimes it seems
to me that the only trouble is that we don't know
one another well enough ; and that the first thing
is to do this." The young fellow spoke with the
seriousness in which the beauty of his face resided.
Whenever he laughed his face looked weak, even
silly. It seemed to be a sense of this that made
him hang his head or turn it away at such times.

" That 's true," said March, from the surface only.
" And then, those phases of low life are immensely
picturesque. Of course we must try to get the con-
trasts of luxury for the sake of the full effect. That
won't be so easy. You can't penetrate to the dinner-
party of a millionaire under the wing of a detective
as you could to a carouse in Mulberry Street, or to
his children's nursery with a philanthropist' as you
can to a street-boy's lodging-house." March laughed,
and again the young man turned his head away.
" Still, something can be done in that way by tact

and patience."

0

VIIL

THAT evening March went with his wife to return
the call of the Dryfoos ladies. On their way up-
town in the Elevated he told her of his talk with
young Dryfoos. " I confess I was a little ashamed
before him afterward for having looked at the matter
so entirely from the aesthetic point of view. But of
course, you know, if I went to work at those things
with an ethical intention explicitly in mind, I should
spoil them."

" Of course," said his wife. She had always heard
him say something of this kind about such things.

He went on : " But I suppose that 's just the
point that such a nature as young Dryfoos' can't get
hold of, or keep hold of. We 're a queer lot, down
there, Isabel — perfect menagerie. If it hadn't been
that Fulkerson got us together, and really seems to
know what he did it for, I should say he was the
oddest stick among us. But when I think of my-
self and my own crankiness for the literary depart-
ment ; 'and young Dryfoos, who ought really to be
in the pulpit, or a monastery, or something, for pub-
lisher ; and that young Beaton, who probably hasn't
a moral fibre in his composition, for the art man, I

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 197

don't know but we could give Fulkerson odds and
still beat him in oddity."

His wife heaved a deep sigh of apprehension, of
renunciation, of monition. "Well, I'm glad you
can feel so light about it, Basil."

" Light ? I feel gay ! With Fulkerson at the
helm, I tell you the rocks and the lee shore had
better keep out of the way." He laughed with
pleasure in his metaphor. "Just when you think
Fulkerson has taken leave of his senses he says or
does something that shows he is on the most inti-
mate and inalienable terms with them all the time.
You know how I've been worrying over those
foreign periodicals, and trying to get some transla-
tion from them for the first number ? Well, Ful-
kerson has brought his centipedal mind to bear on
the subject, and he's suggested that old German
friend of mine I was telling you of — the one I met
in the restaurant — the friend of my youth."

" Do you think he could do it ? " asked Mrs.
March sceptically.

" He 's a perfect Babel of strange tongues ; and
he 's the very man for the work, and I was ashamed
I hadn't thought of him myself, for I suspect he
needs the work."

"Well, be careful how you get mixed up with
him, then, Basil," said his wife, who had the natural
misgiving concerning the friends of her husband's
youth that all wives have. "You know the Ger-
mans are so unscrupulously dependent. You don't
know anything about him now."

198 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

" I 'm not afraid of Lindau," said March. " He
was the best and kindest man I ever saw, the most
high-minded, the most generous. He lost a hand in
the war that helped to save us and keep us possible,
and that stump of his is character enough for me."

" Oh, you don't think I could have meant any-
thing against him ! " said Mrs. March, with the
tender fervour that every woman who lived in the
time of the war must feel for those who suffered in
it. " All that I meant was that I hoped you Avould
not get mixed up with him too much. You're so
apt to be carried away by your impulses."

" They didn't carry me very far away in the direc-
tion of poor old Lindau, I 'm ashamed to think,"
said March. " I meant all sorts of fine things by
him after I met him ; and then I forgot him, and I
had to be reminded of him by Fulkerson."

She did not answer him, and he fell into a re-
morseful reverie, in which he rehabilitated Lindau
anew, and provided handsomely for his old age. He
got him buried with military honours, and had a shaft
raised over him, with a medallion likeness by Beaton
and an epitaph by himself, by the time they reached
Forty -second Street ; there was no time to write
Lindau's life, however briefly, before the train
stopped.

i They had to walk up four blocks and then half a
block across before they came to the indistinctive
brown-stone house where the Dryfooses lived. It
was larger than some in the same block, but the
next neighbourhood of a huge apartment-house

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 199

dwarfed it again. March thought he recognised the
very flat in which he had disciplined the surly
janitor, but he did not tell his wife; he made her
notice the transition character of the street, which
had been mostly built up in apartment-houses, with
here and there a single dwelling dropped far down
beneath and beside them, to that jag-toothed effect
on the sky-line so often observable in such New
York streets. " I don't know exactly what the old
gentleman bought here for," he said, as they waited
on the steps after ringing, "unless he expects to
turn it into flats by-and-by. Otherwise, I don't
believe he '11 get his money back."

An Irish serving-man, with a certain surprise that
delayed him, said the ladies were at home, and let
the Marches in, and then carried their cards
upstairs. The drawing-room, where he said they
could sit down while he went on this errand, was
delicately decorated in white and gold, and fur-
nished with a sort of extravagant good taste ; there
was nothing to object to the satin furniture, -the
pale, soft, rich carpet, the pictures, and the bronze
and china bric-a-brac, except that their costliness
was too evident ; everything in the room meant
money too plainly, and too much of it. The
Marches recognised this in the hoarse whispers
which people cannot get their voices above when
they try to talk away the interval of waiting in such
circumstances ; they conjectured from what they
had heard of the Dryfooses that this tasteful luxury
in nowise expressed ^ their civilisation. " Though

200 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

when you come to that," said March, " I don't know
that Mrs. Green's gimcrackery expresses ours."

" Well, Basil, / didn't take the gimcrackery. That
was your "

The rustle of skirts on the stairs without arrested
Mrs. March in the well-merited punishment which
she never failed to inflict upon her husband when
the question of the gimcrackery — they always called
it that — came up. She rose at the entrance of
a bright-looking, pretty-looking, mature, youngish
lady, in black silk of a neutral implication, who put
out her hand to her, and said, with a very cheery,
very lady-like accent, " Mrs. March ? " and then
added to both of them, while she shook hands with
March, and before they could get the name out of
their mouths, " No, not Miss Dryfoos ! Neither of
them; nor Mrs. Dryfoos. Mrs. MandeL The
ladies will be down in a moment Won't you
throw off your sacque, Mrs. March ? I 'm afraid it 's
rather warm here, coming from the outside."

" I will throw it back, if you '11 allow me," said
Mrs. March, with a sort of provisionally, as if,
pending some uncertainty as to Mrs. Mandel's
quality and authority, she did not feel herself
justified in going further.

But if she did not know about Mrs. Mandel, Mrs.
Mandel seemed to know about her. " Oh, well, do ! "
she said, with a sort of recognition of the propriety
of her caution. " I hope you are feeling a little at
home in New York We heard so much of your
trouble in getting a flat, from Mr. Fulkerson."

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 201

" Well, a true Bostonian doesn't give up quite so
soon," said Mrs. March. " But I will say New York
doesn't seem so far away, now we 're here."

" I 'm sure you '11 like it. Every one does."
Mrs. Mandel added to March, " It 's very sharp out,
isn't it ? "

" Rather sharp. But after our Boston winters I
don't know but I ought to repudiate the word."

" Ah, wait till you have been here through March !"
said Mrs. Mandel. She began with him, but skil-
fully transferred the close of her remark, and the
little smile of menace that went with it, to his wife.

" Yes," said Mrs. March, " or April, either. Talk
about our east winds ! "

" Oh, I 'm sure they can't be worse than our
winds,*' Mrs. Mandel returned caressingly.

"If we escape New York pneumonia," March
laughed, " it will only be to fall a prey to New York
malaria as soon as the frost is out of the ground."

" Oh, but you know," said Mrs. Mandel, " I think
our malaria has really been slandered a little. It 's
more a matter of drainage — of plumbing. I don't
believe it would be possible for malaria to get into
this house, we 've had it gone over so thoroughly."

Mrs. March said, while she tried to divine Mrs.
Mandel's position from this statement, " It 's certainly
the first duty."

" If Mrs. March could have had her way, we
should have had the drainage of our whole ward put
in order," said her husband, "before we ventured to
take a furnished apartment for the winter."
9*

202 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

Mrs. Mandel looked discreetly at Mrs. March for
permission to laugh at this, but at the same moment
both ladies became preoccupied with a second rust-
ling on the stairs.

Two tall, well-dressed young girls came in, and
Mrs. Mandel introduced, "Miss Dryfoos, Mrs. March ;
and Miss Mela Dryfoos, Mr. March," she added, and
the girls shook hands in their several ways with the
Marches.

Miss Dryfoos had keen black eyes, and her hair
was intensely black. Her face, but for the slight
inward curve of the nose, was regular, and the small-
ness of her nose and of her mouth did not weaken
her face, but gave it a curious effect of fierceness, of
challenge. She had a large black fan in her hand,
which she waved in talking, with a slow, watchful
nervousness. Her sister was blonde, and had a profile
like her brother's ; but her chin was not so salient,
and the weak look of the mouth was not corrected
by the spirituality or the fervour of his eyes, though
hers were of the same mottled blue. She dropped
into the low seat beside Mrs. Mandel, and inter-
twined her fingers with those of the hand which
Mrs. Mandel let her have. She smiled upon the
Marches, while Miss Dryfoos watched them in-
tensely, with her eyes first on one and then on the
other, as if she did not mean to let any expression
of theirs escape her.

" My mother will be down in a minute," she said
to Mrs. March.

" I hope we 're not disturbing her. It is so good

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 203

of you to let us come in the evening," Mrs. March
replied.

" Oh, not at all," said the girl. " We receive in
the evening."

" When we do rece'ive," Miss Mela put in. " We
don't always get the chance to." She began a laugh,
which she checked at a smile from Mrs. Mandel,
which no one could have seen to be reproving.

Miss Dryfoos looked down at her fan, and looked
up defiantly at Mrs. March. " I suppose you have
hardly got settled. We were afraid we would dis-
turb you when we called."

" Oh no ! We were very sorry to miss your visit.
We are quite settled in our new quarters. Of course,
it's all very different from Boston."

" I hope it 's more of a sociable place there," Miss
Mela broke in again. " I never saw such an unsoci-
able place as New York. We Ve been in this house
three months, and I don't believe that if we stayed
three years any of the neighbours would call."

" I fancy proximity doesn't count for much in
New York," March suggested.

Mrs. Mandel said : " That's what I tell Miss Mela.
But she is a very social nature, and can't reconcile
herself to the fact."

" No* I can't," the girl pouted. " I think it was
twice as much fun in Moffitt. I wish I was there
now."

" Yes," said March, " I think there 's a great deal
more enjoyment in those smaller places. There 's
not so much going on in the way of public amuse-

2(H A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

ments, and so people make more of one another.
There are not so many concerts, theatres, operas "

" Oh, they 've got a spendid opera-house in Moffitt.
It 's just grand," said Miss Mela.

" Have you been to the opera here, this winter ? "
Mrs. March asked of the elder girl

She was glaring with a frown at her sister, and
detached her eyes from her with an effort. " What
did you say ? " she demanded, with an absent blunt-
ness. " Oh yes. Yes ! We went once. Father
took a box at the Metropolitan."

" Then you got a good dose of Wagner, I sup-
pose ? " said March.

" What ? " asked the girl.

" I don't think Miss Dryfoos is very fond of
Wagner's music," Mrs. Mandel said. "I believe
you are all great Wagnerites in Boston ? "

" I 'm a very bad Bostonian, Mrs. Mandel. I
suspect myself of preferring Verdi," March answered.

Miss Dryfoos looked down at her fan again, and
said, " I like Trovatore the best."

"It's an opera I never get tired of," said March,
and Mrs. March and Mrs. Mandel exchanged a smile
of compassion for his simplicity. He detected it,
and added, " But I dare say I shall come down with
the Wagner feyer in time. I've been exposed to
some malignant cases of it."

"That night we were there," said Miss Mela,
"they had to turn the gas down all through one
part of it, and the papers said the ladies were awful
mad because they couldn't show their diamonds. I

L

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 205

don't wonder, if they all had to pay as much for
their boxes as we did. We had to pay sixty dollars."
She looked at the Marches for their sensation at this
expense.

March said : " Well, I think I shall take my box
by the month, then. It must come cheaper, whole-
sale."

" Oh no, it don't," said the girl, glad to inform"
him. " The people that own their boxes, and that
had to give fifteen or twenty thousand dollars apiece
for them, have to pay sixty dollars a night whenever
there 's a performance, whether they go or not."
" Then I should go every night," March said.

" Most of the ladies were low neck "

March interposed, " Well, I shouldn't go low neck"
The girl broke into a fondly approving laugh at
his drolling. " Oh, I guess you love to train ! Us
girls wanted to go low neck, too ; but father said we
shouldn't, and mother said if we did she wouldn't
come to the front of the box once. Well, she didn't,
anyway. We might just as well 'a' gone low neck.
She stayed back the whole time, and when they had
that dance — the ballet, you know — she just shut her
eyes. Well, Conrad didn't like that part much,
either ; but us girls and Mrs. Mandel, we brazened
it out right in the front of the box. We were about
the only ones there that went high neck. Conrad
had to wear a swallow-tail ; but father hadn't any,
and he had to patch out with a white cravat. You
couldn't see what he had on in the back o' the box,
anyway."

206 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

Mrs. March looked at Miss Dryfoos, who was
waving her fan more and more slowly up and down,
and who, when she felt herself looked at, returned
Mrs. March's smile, which she meant to be ingratiat-
ing and perhaps sympathetic, with a flash that made
her start, and then ran her fierce eyes over March's
face. " Here comes mother," she said, with a sort
of breathlessness, as if speaking her thought aloud,
and through the open door the Marches could see
the old lady on the stairs.

She paused half-way down, and turning, called
up : " Coonrod ! Coonrod ! You bring my shawl
down with you."

Her daughter Mela called out to her, " Now,
mother, Christine '11 give it to you for not sending
Mike."

"Well, I don't know where he is, Mely, child,"
the mother answered back. " He ain't never around
when he 's wanted, and when he ain't, it seems like a
body couldn't git shet of him, nohow."

"Well, you ought to ring for him," cried Miss
Mela, enjoying the joke.

Her mother came in with a slow step ; her head
shook slightly as she looked about the room, perhaps
from nervousness, perhaps from a touch of palsy.
In either case the fact had a pathos which Mrs.
March confessed in the affection with which she
took her hard, dry, large, old hand when she was
introduced to her, and in the sincerity which she
put into the hope that she was well.

"I'm just middlin'," Mrs. Dryfoos replied. "I

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 207

ain't never so well, nowadays. I tell fawther I
don't believe it agrees with me very well here ; but
he says 1 11 git used to it. He 's away now, out at
Moffitt," she said to March, and wavered on foot a
moment before she sank into a chair. She was a
tall woman, who had been a beautiful girl, and her
grey hair had a memory of blondeness in it like
Lindau's, March noticed. She wore a simple silk
gown, of a Quakerly grey, and she held a handker-
chief folded square, as it had come from the laun-
dress. Something like the Sabbath quiet of a little
wooden meeting-house in thick Western woods ex-
pressed itself to him from her presence.

" Laws, mother ! " said Miss Mela ; " what you
got that old thing on for ? If I 'd 'a' known you 'd
V come down in that ! "

" Coonrod said it was all right, Mely," said her
mother.

Miss Mela explained to the Marches : " Mother
was raised among the Dunkards, and she thinks it 's
wicked to wear anything but a grey silk even for
dress up."

" You hain't never heared o' the Dunkards, I
reckon," the old woman said to Mrs. March.
" Some folks calls 'em the Beardy Men, because
they don't never shave ; and they wash feet like
they do in the Testament. My uncle was one. He
raised me."

" I guess pretty much everybody 's a Beardy Man
nowadays, if he ain't a Dunkard ! "

Miss Mela looked round for applause of her sally,

208 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

but March was saying to his wife : " It 's a Pennsyl-
vania German sect, I believe — something like the
Quakers. I used to see them when I was a boy."

" Aren't they something like the Mennists 1 "
asked Mrs. MandeL

" They 're good people," said the old woman,
" and the world 'd be a heap better off if there
was more like 'em."

Her son came in and laid a soft shawl over her
shoulders before he shook hands with the visitors.
" I am glad you found your way here," he said to
them.

Christine, who had been bending forward over
her fan, now lifted herself up with a sigh and leaned
back in her chair.

" I 'm sorry my father isn't here," said the young
man to Mrs. March. " He 's never met you yet ? "

" No ; and I should like to see him. We hear a
great deal about your father, you know, from Mr.
Fulkerson."

"Oh, I hope you don't believe everything Mr.
Fulkerson says about people," Mela cried. "He's
the greatest person for carrying on when he gets
going / ever saw. It makes Christine just as mad
when him and mother get to talking about religion ;
she says she knows he don't care anything more
about it than the man in the moon. I reckon he
don't try it on much with father."

" Your fawther ain't ever been a perfessor," her
mother interposed ; " but he 's always been a good
church-goin' man."

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 209

" Not since we come to New York," retorted the
girl.

" He 's been all broke up since he come to New
York," said the old woman, with an aggrieved look.

Mrs. Mandel attempted a diversion. " Have you
heard any of our great New York preachers yet,
Mrs. March 1 "

" No, I haven't," Mrs. March admitted ; and she
tried to imply by her candid tone that she intended
to begin hearing them the very next Sunday.

"There are a great many things here," said
Conrad, "to take your thoughts off the preaching
that you hear in most of the churches. I think the
city itself is preaching the best sermon all the time."

" I don't know that I understand you," said March.

Mela answered for him. " Oh, Conrad has got a,
lot of notions that nobody can understand. You
ought to see the church he goes to when he does go.
I 'd about as lief go to a Catholic church myself ; I
don't see a bit o' difference. He's the greatest
crony with one of their preachers ; he dresses just
like a priest, and he says he is a priest." She
laughed for enjoyment of the fact, and her brother
cast down his eyes.

Mrs. March, in her turn, tried to take from it the
personal tone which the talk was always assuming.
"Have you been to the fall exhibition 1" she asked
Christine ; and the girl drew herself up out of the
abstraction she seemed sunk in.

" The exhibition 1 " She looked at Mrs. Mandel.

"The pictures of the Academy, you know," Mrs.

210 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

Mandel explained. " Where I wanted you to go the
day you had your dress tried on."

" Xo ; we haven't been yet. Is it good ? " She
had turned to Mrs. March again.

" I believe the fall exhibitions are never so good
as the spring ones. But there are some good
pictures."

" I don't believe I care much about pictures," said
Christine. "I don't understand them."

" Ah, that 's no excuse for not caring about them,"
said March lightly. " The painters themselves
don't, half the time."

The girl looked at him with that glance at once
defiant and appealing, insolent and anxious, which
he had noticed before, especially when she stole it
toward himself and his wife during her sister's
babble. In the light of Fulkerson's history of the
family, its origin and its ambition, he interpreted
it to mean a sense of her sister's folly and an
ignorant will to override his opinion of anything
incongruous in themselves and their surroundings.
He said to himself that she was deathly proud — too
proud to try to palliate anything, but capable of
anything that would put others under her feet. Her
eyes seemed hopelessly to question his wife's social
quality, and he fancied, with not unkindly interest,
the inexperienced girl's doubt whether to treat them
with much or little respect. He lost himself in
fancies about her and her ideals, necessarily sor-
did, of her possibilities of suffering, of the triumphs
and disappointments before her. Her sister would

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 211

accept both with a lightness that would keep no
trace of either ; but in her they would sink lastingly
deep. He came out of his reverie to find Mrs.
Dryfoos saying to him in her hoarse voice —

" I think it 's a shame, some of the pictur's a body
sees in the winders. They say there 's a law aginst
them things ; and if there is, I don't understand
why the police don't take up them that paints 'em.
I hear tell, since I been here, that there 's women
that goes to have pictur's took from them that way by
men painters." The point seemed aimed at March,
as if he were personally responsible for the scandal,
and it fell with a silencing effect for the moment.
Nobody seemed willing to take it up, and Mrs.
Dryfoos went on, with an old woman's severity : " I
say they ought to be all tarred and feathered and
rode on a rail. They 'd be drummed out of town in
Moffitt."

Miss Mela said, with a crowing laugh : " I should
think they would ! And they wouldn't anybody go
low neck to the opera-house there, either — not low
neck the way they do here, anyway."

" And that pack of worthless hussies," her mother
resumed, " that come out on the stage, and begun to
kick "

" Laws, mother ! " the girl shouted, " I thought
you said you had your eyes shut ! "

All but these two simpler creatures were abashed
at the indecorum of suggesting in words the com-
mon-places of the theatre and of art.

" Well, I did, Mely, as soon as I could believe my
.f

212 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

eyes. I don't know what they 're doin' in all their
churches, to let such things go on," said the old
woman. " It 's a sin and a shame, / think. Don't
• you, Coonrod ? "

A ring at the door cut short whatever answer he
•was about to deliver.

" If it 's going to be company, Coonrod," said his
mother, making an effort to rise, "I reckon I better
go upstairs."

"It's Mr. Fulkerson, I guess," said Conrad. "He
thought he might come ; " and at the mention of
this light spirit Mrs. Dryfoos sank contentedly back
in her chair, and a relaxation of their painful ten-
sion seemed to pass through the whole company.
Conrad went to the door himself (the serving-man
tentatively appeared some minutes later) and let in
Fulkerson's cheerful voice before his cheerful person.

" Ah, how d' ye do, Conrad ? Brought our friend,
Mr. Beaton, with me," those within heard him say ;
and then, after a sound of putting off overcoats, they
saw him fill the doorway, with his feet set square
and his arms akimbo.

IX.

" AH ! hello ! hello ! " Fulkerson said, in recognition
of the Marches. " Regular gathering of the clans.
How are you, Mrs. Dryfoos ? How do you do, Mrs.
Mandel, Miss Christine, Mela, Aunt Hitty, and all
the folks ? How you wuz 1 " He shook hands
gaily all round, and took a chair next the old lady,
whose hand he kept in his own, and left Conrad to
introduce Beaton. But he would not let the shadow
of Beaton's solemnity fall upon the company. He
began to joke with Mrs. Dryfoos, and to match
rheumatisms with her, and he included all the
ladies in the range of appropriate pleasantries.
"I've brought Mr. Beaton along to-night, and I
want you to make him feel at home, like you do me,
Mrs. Dryfoos. He hasn't got any rheumatism to
speak of ; but his parents live in Syracuse, and he 's
a kind of an orphan, and we've just adopted him
down at the office. When you going to bring the
young ladies down there, Mrs. Mandel, for a cham-
pagne lunch ? I will have some hydro-Mela, and
Christine it, heigh 1 How 's that for a little starter ?
We dropped in at your place a moment, Mrs. March,
and gave the young folks a few pointers about their

214 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

studies. My goodness ! it does me good to see a
boy like that of yours ; business, from the word go ;
and your girl just scoops my youthful affections.
She 's a beauty, and I guess she 's good too. Well,
well, what a world it is ! Miss Christine, won't you
show Mr. Beaton that seal ring of yours 1 He
knows about such things, and I brought him here
to see it as much as anything. It 's an intaglio I
brought from the other side," he explained to Mrs.
March, " and I guess you '11 like to look at it. Tried
to give it to the Dryfoos family, and when I couldn't,
I sold it to 'em. Bound to see it on Miss Christine's
hand somehow ! Hold on ! Let him see it where
it belongs, first ! "

He arrested the girl in the motion she made to
take off the ring, and let her have the pleasure of
showing her hand to the company with the ring on
it. Then he left her to hear the painter's words
about it, which he continued to deliver dissyllabically
as he stood with her under a gas jet, twisting his
elastic figure and bending his head over the ring.

" Well, Mely, child," Fulkerson went on, with an
open travesty of her mother's habitual address,
" and how are you getting along ? Mrs. Mandel
hold you up to the proprieties pretty strictly ? Well,
that 's right. You know you 'd be roaming all over
the pasture if she didn't."

The girl gurgled out her pleasure in his funning,
and everybody took him on his own ground of
privileged character. He brought them all together
in their friendliness for himself, and before the

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 215

evening was over he had inspired Mrs. Mandel to
have them served with coffee, and had made both
the girls feel that they had figured brilliantly in
society, and that two young men had been devoted
to them.

" Oh, I think he 's just as lovely as he can live ! "
said Mela, as she stood a moment with her sister
on the scene of her triumph, where the others had
left them after the departure of their guests.

" Who 1 " asked Christine deeply. As she
glanced down at her ring, her eyes burned with a
softened fire. She had allowed Beaton to change
it himself from the finger where she had worn it to
the finger on which he said she ought to wear it.
She did not know whether it was right to let him,
but she was glad she had done it.

" Who ? Mr. Fulkerson, goosie-poosie ! Not
that old stuck-up Mr. Beaton of yours ! "

" He is proud," assented Christine, with a throb
of exultation.

Beaton and Fulkerson went to the elevated
station with the Marches ; but the painter said he was
going to Avalk home, and Fulkerson let him go alone.

" One way is enough for me," he explained.
" When I walk up, I don't walk down. By -by, my
son ! " He began talking about Beaton to the
Marches as they climbed the station stairs together.
" That fellow puzzles me. I don't know anybody
that I have such a desire to kick, and at the same
time that I want to flatter up so much. Affect you
that way 1 " he asked of March.

216 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

" Well, as far as the kicking goes, yes."

" And how is it with you, Mrs. March 1 "

" Oh, I want to flatter him up."

"No; really? Why?— Hold on! I've got the
change."

Fulkerson pushed March away from the ticket-
office window, and made them his guests, with the
inexorable American hospitality, for the ride down-
town. " Three ! " he said to the ticket-seller ; and
when he had walked them before him out on the
platform and dropped his tickets into the urn, he
persisted in his inquiry, " Why ? "

"Why, because you always want to flatter con-
ceited people, don't you ? " Mrs. March answered,
with a laugh.

"Do you? Yes, I guess you do. You think
Beaton is conceited 1 "

" Well, slightly, Mr. Fulkerson."

"I guess you're partly right," said Fulkerson,
with a sigh, so unaccountable in its connection that
they all laughed.

" An ideal ' busted ' ? " March suggested.

" No, not that, exactly," said Fulkerson. " But I had
a notion may be Beaton wasn't conceited all the time."

" Oh ! " Mrs. March exulted, " nobody could be
so conceited all the time as Mr. Beaton is most of
the time. He must have moments of the direst
modesty, when he 'd be quite flattery-proof."

" Yes, that 's what I mean. I guess that 's what
makes me want to kick him. He 's left compliments
on my hands that no decent man would."

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 217

" Oh ! that 's tragical," said March.

" Mr. Fulkerson," Mrs. March began, with change
of subject in her voice, " who is Mrs. Mandel ? "

" Who 1 What do you think of her ? " he re-
joined. " I '11 tell you about her when we get in the
cars. Look at that thing ! Ain't it beautiful 1 "

They leaned over the track, and looked up at
the next station, where the train, just starting,
throbbed out the flame-shot steam into the white
moonlight.

"The most beautiful thing in New York — the
one always and certainly beautiful thing here,"
said March; and his wife sighed, "Yes, yes." She
clung to him, and remained rapt by the sight till
the train drew near, and then pulled him back in
a panic.

" Well, there ain't really much to tell about her,"
Fulkerson resumed, when they were seated in the
car. " She 's an invention of mine."

" Of yours ? " cried Mrs. March.

" Of course ! " exclaimed her husband.

" Yes — at least in her present capacity. She sent
me a story for the syndicate, back in July some
time, along about the time I first met old Dryfoos
here. It was a little too long for my purpose, and I
thought I could explain better how I wanted it cut
in a call than I could in a letter. She gave a
Brooklyn address, and I went to see her. I found
her," said Fulkerson, with a vague defiance, "a
perfect lady. She was living with an aunt over
there ; and she had seen better days, when she was
VOL. I.— 10

218 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

a girl, and worse ones afterward. I don't mean to
say her husband was a bad fellow ; I guess he was
pretty good ; he was her music-teacher ; she met
him in Germany, and they got married there, and
got through her property before they came over
here. Well, she didn't strike me like a person that
could make much headway in literature. Her story
was well enough, but it hadn't much sand in it;
kind of — well, academic, you know. I told her so,
and she understood, and cried a little ; but she did
the best she could with the thing, and I took it and
syndicated it. She kind of stuck in my mind, and
the first time I went to see the Dryfooses — they
were stopping at a sort of family hotel then till they
could find a house " Fulkerson broke off alto-
gether, and said, "I don't know as I know just how
the Dryfooses stnick you, Mrs. March 1 "

" Can't you imagine ? " she answered. Avith a
kindly smile.

"Yes; but I don't believe I could guess how they
would have struck you last summer when I first saw
them. My ! oh my ! there was the native earth for
you. Mely is a pretty wild colt now, but you
ought to have seen her before she was broken to
harness. And Christine 1 Ever see that black
leopard they got up there in the Central Park ?
That was Christine. Well, I saw what they wanted.
They all saw it — nobody is a fool in all directions,
and the Dryfooses are in their right senses a good
deal of the time. Well, to cut a long story short, I
got Mrs. Mandel to take 'em in hand — the old lady

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 219

as well as the girls. She was a born lady, and
always lived like one till she saw Mandel ; and that
something academic that killed her for a writer was
just the very thing for them. She knows the world
well enough to know just how much polish they can
take on, and she don't try to put on a bit more. See ? "

" Yes, I can see," said Mrs. March.

" Well, she took hold at once, as ready as a
hospital-trained nurse ; and there ain't anything
readier on this planet. She runs the whole concern,
socially and economically, takes all the care of
house-keeping off the old lady's hands, and goes
round with the girls. By-the-by, I 'm going to take
my meals at your widow's, March, and Conrad's
going to have his lunch there. I 'in sick of brows-
ing about."

" Mr. March's widow 1 " said his wife, looking at
him with provisional severity.

" I have no widow, Isabel," he said, " and never
expect to have, till I leave you in the enjoyment of
my life insurance. I suppose Fulkerson means the
lady with the daughter, who wanted to take us
to board."

" Oh yes. How are they getting on, I do
wonder 1 " Mrs. March asked of Fulkerson.

" Well, they 've got one family to board ; but it 's
a small one. I guess they '11 pull through. They
didn't want to take any day boarders at first, the
widow said ; I guess they have had to come to it."

" Poor things ! " sighed Mrs. March. " I hope
they '11 go back to the country."

220 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

" Well, I don't know. When you 've once tasted

New York You wouldn't go back to Boston,

would you ? "

"Instantly."

Fulkerson laughed out a tolerant incredulity.

BEATON lit his pipe when he found himself in his
room, and sat down before the dull fire in his grate
to think. It struck him there was a dull fire in his
heart a great deal like it, and he worked out a
fanciful analogy with the coals, still alive, and the
ashes creeping over them, and the dead clay and
cinders. He felt sick of himself, sick of his life and
of all his works. He was angry with Fulkerson for
having got him into that art department of his, for
having bought him up ; and he was bitter at fate
because he had been obliged to use the money to
pay some pressing debts, and had not been able to
return the check his father had sent him. He pitied
his poor old father ; he ached with compassion for
him ; and he set his teeth and snarled with con-
tempt through them for his own baseness. This
was the kind of world it was ; but he washed his
hands of it. The fault was in human nature, and
he reflected with pride that he had at least not in-
vented human nature ; he had not sunk so low as
that yet. The notion amused him ; he thought he
might get a Satanic epigram out of it some way.
But in the meantime that girl, that wild animal,

222 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

she kept visibly, tangibly before him ; if he put out
his hand he might touch hers, he might pass his arm
round her waist. In Paris, in a set he knew there,
what an effect she would be with that look of hers,
and that beauty, all out of drawing ! They would
recognise the flame quality in her. He imagined a
joke about her being a fiery spirit, or nymph, naiad,
whatever, from one of her native gas wells. He
began to sketch on a bit of paper from the table at
his elbow vague lines that veiled and revealed a
level, dismal landscape, and a vast flame against an
empty sky, and a shape out of the flame that took
on a likeness, and floated detached from it. The
sketch ran up the left side of the sheet and stretched
across it. Beaton laughed out. Pretty good to let
Fulkerson have that for the cover of his first number!
In black and red it would be effective ; it would
catch the eye from the news stands. He made a
motion to throw it on the fire, but held it back, and
slid it into the table drawer, and smoked on. He
saw the dummy with the other sketch in the open
drawer, which he had brought away from Fulker-
son's in the morning and slipped in there, and he
took it out and looked at it. He made some criticisms
in line with his pencil on it, correcting the drawing
here and there, and then he respected it a little
more, though he still smiled at the feminine quality
'• — a young lady quality.

In spite of his experience the night he called upon
the Leightons, Beaton could not believe that Alma
no longer cared for him. She played at having

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 223

forgotten him admirably, but he knew that a few
months before she had been very mindful of him.
He knew he had neglected them since they came to
New York, where he had led them to expect interest,
if not attention ; but he was used to neglecting
people, and he was somewhat less used to being
punished for it — punished and forgiven. He felt
that Alma had punished him so thoroughly that she
ought to have been satisfied with her work and to
have forgiven him in her heart afterward. He bore
no resentment after the first tingling moments were
past ; he rather admired her for it ; and he would
have been ready to go back half an hour later, and
accept pardon, and be on the footing of last summer
again. ^Even now he debated with himself whether
it was too late to call ; but decidedly a quarter to ten
seemed late. The next day he determined never to
call upon the Leightons again ; but he had no reason
for this ; it merely came into a transitory scheme of
conduct, of retirement from the society of women
altogether ; and after dinner he went round to see
them.

He asked for the ladies, and they all three received
him, Alma not without a surprise that intimated itself
to him, and her mother with no appreciable relent-
ing; Miss Woodburn, with the needlework which
she found easier to be voluble over than a book,
expressed in her welcome a neutrality both cordial
to Beaton and loyal to Alma.

" Is it snowing out-do's 1 " she asked briskly, after
the greetings were transacted. " Mah goodness ! "

224 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

she said, in answer to his apparent surprise at the
question. " Ah mahght as well have stayed in the
Soath, for all the winter Ah have seen in New York
yet." '

"We don't often have snow much before New-
Year's," said Beaton.

" Miss Woodburn is wild for a real Northern
winter," Mrs. Leighton explained.

"The othah naght Ah woke up and looked oat
of the window and saw all the roofs covered with
snow, and it turned oat to be nothing but moonlaght.
I was never so disappointed in mah lahfe," said Miss
Woodburn.

" If you '11 come to St. Barnaby next summer, you
shall have all the winter you want," said Alma.

" I can't let you slander St. Barnaby in that way,"
said Beaton, with the air of wishing to be understood
as meaning more than he said.

" Yes ? " returned Alma coolly. " I didn't know
you were so fond of the climate."

" I never think of it as a climate. It 's a landscape.
It doesn't matter whether it's hot or cold."

"With the thermometer twenty below, you'd
find that it mattered," Alma persisted.

"You don't mean it goes doan to that in the
summah ? " Miss Woodburn interposed.

" Well, not before the Fourth of the July after,"
Alma admitted.

"Is that the way you feel about St. Barnaby
too, Mrs. Leighton ? " Beaton asked, with affected
desolation.

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES 225

" I shall be glad enough to go back in the summer,"
Mrs. Leigh ton conceded.

" And I should be glad to go now," said Beaton,
looking at Alma. He had the dummy of Every Other
Week in his hand, and he saw Alma's eyes wandering
toward it whenever he glanced at her. " I should
be glad to go anywhere to get out of a job I Ve
undertaken," he continued, to Mrs. Leighton.
"They're going to start some sort of a new
illustrated magazine, and they've got me in for
their art department. I 'm not fit for it ; I 'd like to
run away. Don't you want to advise me a little,
Mrs. Leighton ] You know how much I value your
taste, and I 'd like to have you look at the design
for the cover of the .first number : they 're going to
have a different one for every number. I don't
know whether you '11 agree with me, but I think
this is rather nice."

He faced the dummy round, and then laid it
on the table before Mrs. Leighton, pushing some
of her work aside to make room for it, and
standing over her while she bent forward to look
at it.

Alma kept her place, away from the table.

" Mah goodness ! Ho' exciting ! " said Miss
Woodburn. " May anybody look ? "

" Everybody," said Beaton.

" Well, isn't it perfectly chawming ! " Miss Wood-
burn exclaimed. " Come and look at this, Miss
Leighton," she called to Alma, who reluctantly
approached.
10*

226 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

" What lines are these 1 " Mrs. Leighton asked,
pointing to Beaton's pencil scratches.

"They're suggestions of modification," he re-
plied.

" I don't think they improve it much. What do
you think, Alma 1 "

"Oh, I don't know," said the girl, constraining
her voice to an effect of indifference, and glancing
carelessly down at the sketch. " The design might
be improved; but I don't think those suggestions
would do it."

"They 're mine," said Beaton, fixing his eyes upon
her with a beautiful sad dreaminess that he knew
he could put into them ; he spoke with a dreamy
remoteness of tone : his wind-harp stop, Wetmore
called it.

" I supposed so," said Alma calmly.

" Oh, mah goodness ! " cried Miss Woodburn.
" Is that the way you awtusts talk to each othah ?
Well, Ah 'm glad Ah 'm not an awtust — unless I
could do all the talking."

"Artists cannot tell a fib," Alma said, "or even
act one," and she laughed in Beaton's upturned face.

He did not unbend his dreamy gaze. "You're
quite right. The suggestions are stupid."

Alma turned to Miss Woodburn : " You hear ?
Even when we speak of our own work."

" Ah nevah hoad anything lahke it ! "

"And the design itself1? " Beaton persisted.

" Oh, I 'm not an art editor," Alma answered,
with a laugh of exultant evasion.

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 227

A tall, dark, grave-looking man of fifty, with a
swarthy face, and iron-grey moustache and imperial
and goatee, entered the room. Beaton knew the
type ; he had been through Virginia sketching for
one of the illustrated papers, and he had seen such
men in Bichmond. Miss Woodburn hardly needed
to say, " May Ah introduce you to mah fathaw,
Co'nel Woodburn, Mr. Beaton 1 "

The men shook hands, and Colonel Woodburn
said, in that soft, gentle, slow Southern voice with-
out our Northern contractions : " I am very glad to
meet you, sir; happy to make yo' acquaintance.
Do not move, madam," he said to Mrs. Leighton,
who made a deprecatory motion to let him pass to
the chair beyond her; "I can find my way." He
bowed a bulk that did not lend itself readily to the
devotion, and picked up the ball of yarn she had let
drop out of her lap in half rising. " Yo' worsteds,
madam."

" Yarn, yarn, Colonel Woodburn ! " Alma shouted.
" You 're quite incorrigible. A spade is a spade ! " .

"But sometimes it is a trump, my dear young
lady," said the Colonel, with unabated gallantry ;
"and when yo' mothah uses yarn, it is worsteds.
But I respect worsteds even under the name of yarn :
our ladies — my own mothah and sistahs — had to
knit the socks we wore — all we could get — in the
woe."

"Yes, and aftah the woe," his daughter put in.
"The knitting has not stopped yet in some places.
Have you been much in the Soath, Mr. Beaton ? "
Q

228 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

Beaton explained just how much.

"Well, sir," said the Colonel, "then you have
seen a country making gigantic struggles to retrieve
its losses, sir. The south is advancing with enor-
mous strides, sir."

" Too fast for some of us to keep up," said Miss
Woodburn, in an audible aside. " The pace in
Charlottesboag is pofectly killing, and we had to
drop oat into a slow place like New York."

" The progress in the South is material now/'
said the Colonel ; " and those of us whose interests
are in another direction find ourselves — isolated —
isolated, sir. The intellectual centres are still in
the No'th, sir ; the great cities draw the mental
activity of the country to them, sir. Necessarily
New York is the metropolis."

" Oh, everything comes here," said Beaton, im-
patient of the elder's ponderosity. Another sort of
man would have sympathised with the Southerner's
willingness to talk of himself, and led him on to
speak of his plans and ideals. But the sort of man
that Beaton was could not do this ; he put up the
dummy into the wrapper he had let drop on the
floor beside him, and tied it round with string while
Colonel Woodburn was talking. He got to his
feet with the words he spoke, and offered Mrs.
Leighton his hand.

" Must you go ? " she asked, in surprise.

" I am on my way to a reception," he said. She
had noticed that he was in evening dress ; and now
she felt the vague hurt that people invited nowhere

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 229

feel in the presence of those who are going some-
where. She did not feel it for herself, but for her
daughter ; and she knew Alma would not have let
her feel it if she could have prevented it. But Alma
had left the room for a moment, and she tacitly
indulged this sense of injury in her behalf.

" Please say good night to Miss Leigh ton for me,"
Beaton continued. He bowed to Miss Woodburn,
" Good night, Miss Woodburn," and to her father
bluntly, "Goodnight."

" Good night, sir," said the Colonel, with a sort of
severe suavity.

" Oh, isn't he chawming ! " Miss Woodburn whis-
pered to Mrs. Leighton when Beaton left the room.

Alma spoke to him in the hall without. " You
knew that was my design Mr. Beaton. Why did
you bring it 1 "

" Why 1 " He looked at her in gloomy hesita-
tion. Then he said : "You know why. I wished
to talk it over with you, to serve you, please you,
get back your good opinion. But I 've done neither
the one nor the other ; I Ve made a mess of the
whole thing."

Alma interrupted him. " Has it been accepted ? "

"It will be accepted, if you will let it."

" Let it ? " she laughed. " I shall be delighted."
She saw him swayed a little toward her. " It 's a
matter of business, isn't it ? "

" Purely. Good night."

When Alma returned to the room, Colonel Wood-
burn was saying to Mrs. Leighton : " I do not contend

230 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

that it is impossible, madam, but it is very difficult
in a thoroughly commercialised society, like yours,
to have the feelings of a gentleman. How can a
business man, whose prosperity, whose earthly salva-
tion, necessarily lies in the adversity of some one
else, be delicate and chivalrous, or even honest ? If
we could have had time to perfect our system at the
South, to eliminate what was evil and develop what
was good in it, we should have had a perfect system.
But the virus of commercialism was in us too; it
forbade us to make the best of a divine institution,
and tempted us to make the worst. Now the curse
is on the whole country ; the dollar is the measure
of every value, the stamp of every success. What
does not sell is a failure ; and what sells succeeds."

"The hobby is oat, man deah," said Miss Wood-
burn, in an audible aside to Alma.

" Were you speaking of me, Colonel Woodburn ? "
Alma asked.

" Surely not, my dear young lady."

"But he's been saying that awtusts are just as
greedy aboat money as anybody," said his daughter.

" The law of commercialism is on everything in a
commercial society," the Colonel explained, softening
the tone in which his convictions were presented.
"The final reward of art is money, and not the
pleasure of creating."

" Perhaps they would be willing to take it all oat
in that, if othah people would let them pay their
bills in the pleasure of creating," his daughter teased.

"They are helpless, like all the rest," said her

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 231

father, with the same deference to her as to other
women. "I do not blame them."

" Oh, mah goodness ! Didn't you say, sir, that
Mr. Beaton had bad manners ? "

Alma relieved a confusion which he seemed to
feel in reference to her. " Bad manners ? He has
no manners ! That is, when he 's himself. He has
pretty good ones when he 's somebody else."

Miss Woodburn began, " Oh, mah " and then

stopped herself. Alma's mother looked at her with
distressful question, but the girl seemed perfectly
cool and contented ; and she gave her mind pro-
visionally to a point suggested by Colonel Wood-
burn's talk.

" Still, I can't believe it was right to hold people
in slavery, to whip them and sell them. It never
did 'seem right tome," she added, in apology for
her extreme sentiments to the gentleness of her
adversary.

"I quite agree with you, madam/' said the
Colonel. " Those were the abuses of the institution.
But if we had not been vitiated on the one hand and
threatened on the other by the spirit of com-
mercialism from the North — and from Europe too — •
those abuses could have been eliminated, and the
institution developed in the direction of the mild
patriarchalism of the divine intention." The Colonel
hitched his chair, which figured a hobby careering
upon its hind legs, a little toward Mrs. Leighton,
and the girls approached their heads, and began to
whisper; they fell deferentially silent when the

232 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

Colonel paused in his argument, and went on again
when he went on.

At last they heard Mrs. Leighton saying, "And
have you heard from the publishers about your book
yet ? "

Then Miss Woodburn cut in, before her father
could answer : " The coase of commercialism is on
that too. They are trahing to fahnd oat whethah
it will pay."

" And they are right — quite right," said the
Colonel. " There is no longer any other criterion ;
and even a work that attacks the system must be
submitted to the tests of the system."

"The system won't accept destruction on any
othah tomes," said Miss Woodburn demurely.

XL

AT the reception, where two men in livery stood
aside to let him pass up the outside steps of the
house, and two more helped him off with his over-
coat indoors, and a fifth miscalled his name into
the drawing-room, the Syracuse stone-cutter's son
met the niece of Mrs. Horn, and began at once to
tell her about his evening at the Dryfooses'. He
was in very good spirits, for so far as he could have
been elated or depressed by his parting with Alma
Leighton he had been elated ; she had not treated
his impudence with the contempt that he felt it
deserved ; she must still be fond of him ; and the
warm sense of this, by operation of an obscure but
well-recognised law of the masculine being, disposed
him to be rather fond of Miss Vance. She was a
slender girl, whose semi-aesthetic dress flowed about
her with an accentuation of her long forms, and
redeemed them from censure by the very frankness
with which it confessed them; nobody could have
said that Margaret Vance was too tall. Her pretty
little head, which she had an effect of choosing to
have little in the same spirit of judicious defiance,
had a good deal of reading in it ; she was proud to

234 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

know literary and artistic fashions as well as society
fashions. She liked being singled out by an exterior
distinction so obvious as Beaton's, and she listened
with sympathetic interest to his account of those
people. He gave their natural history reality by
drawing upon his own ; he reconstructed their
plebeian past from the experiences of his childhood
and his youth of the pre-Parisian period ; and he
had a pang of suicidal joy in insulting their ignorance
of the world.

" What different kinds of people you meet ! " said
the girl at last, with an envious sigh. Her reading
had enlarged the bounds of her imagination, if not
her knowledge ; the novels nowadays dealt so much
with very common people, and made them seem so
very much more worth while than the people one met.

She said something like this to Beaton. He
answered: "You can meet the people I'm talking
of very easily, if you want to take the trouble.
It 's what they came to New York for. I fancy it 's
the great ambition of their lives to be met."

"Oh yes," said Miss Vance fashionably, and
looked down ; then she looked up and said intel-
lectually : " Don't you think it 's a great pity ?
How much better for them to have stayed where
they were and what they were ! "

"Then you could never have had any chance of
meeting them," said Beaton. " I don't suppose you
intend to go out to the gas country 1 "

"No," said Miss Vance, amused. "Not that I
shouldn't like to go."

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 235

" What a daring spirit ! You ought to be on the
staff of Every Other Week" said Beaton.

" The staff— Every Other Week 1 What is it ? "

" The missing link ; the long-felt want of a tie
between the Arts and the Dollars." Beaton gave
her a very picturesque, a very dramatic sketch of
the theory, the purpose, and the personnel of the new
enterprise.

Miss Vance understood too little about business
of any kind to know how it differed from other
enterprises of its sort. She thought it was de-
lightful ; she thought Beaton must be glad to be
part of it, though he had represented himself so
bored, so injured, by Fulkerson's insisting upon
having him. "And is it a secret1? Is it a thing
not to be spoken of 1 "

" Tut? altro ! Fulkerson will be enraptured to
have it spoken of in society. He would pay any
reasonable bill for the advertisement."

" What a delightful creature ! Tell him it shall
all be spent in charity."

"He would like that He would get two para-
graphs out of the fact, and your name would go into
the ' Literary Notes' of all the Newspapers."

" Oh, but I shouldn't want my name used ! " cried
the girl, half horrified into fancying the situa-
tion real.

"Then you'd better not say anything about
Every Other Week. Fulkerson is preternaturally
unscrupulous."

March began to think so too, at times. He was

236 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

perpetually suggesting changes in the make-up of
the first number, with a view to its greater vividness
of effect. One day he came in and said : " This
thing isn't going to have any sort of get up and
howl about it, unless you have a paper in the first
number going for Bevans's novels. Better get
Maxwell to do it."

" Why, I thought you liked Bevans's novels ? "

"So I do; but where the good of Every Other
Week is concerned I am a Roman father. The
popular gag is to abuse Bevans, and Maxwell is
the man to do it. There hasn't been a new maga-
zine started for the last three years that hasn't had
an article from Maxwell in its first number cutting
Bevans all to pieces. If people don't see it, they '11
think Every Other Week is some old thing."

March did not know whether Fulkerson was
joking or not. He suggested, " Perhaps they '11
think it 's an old thing if they do see it."

" Well, get somebody else, then ; or else get
Maxwell to write under an assumed name. Or —
I forgot ! He '11 be anonymous under our system
anyway. Now there ain't a more popular racket
for us to work in that first number than a good,
swingeing attack on Bevans. People read his books
and quarrel over 'em, and the critics are all against
him, and a regular flaying, with salt and vinegar
rubbed in afterward, will tell more with people who
like good old-fashioned fiction than anything else.
/ like Bevans's things, but, dad burn it ! when it
comes to that first number, I 'd offer up anybody."

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 237

" What an immoral little wretch you are, Fulker-
son ! " said March, with a laugh.

Fulkerson appeared not to be very strenuous
about the attack on the novelist. " Say !" he called
out gaily, " what should you think of a paper
defending the late lamented system of slavery 1 "

" What do you mean, Fulkerson 1 " asked March,
with a puzzled smile.

Fulkerson braced his knees against his desk, and
pushed himself back, but kept his balance to the eye
by canting his hat sharply forward. "There's an
old cock over there at the widow's that 's written a
book to prove that slavery was and is the only solu-
tion of the labour problem. He's a Southerner."

" I should imagine," March assented.

" He 's got it on the brain that if the South could
have been let alone by the commercial spirit and the
pseudo-philanthropy of the North, it would have
worked out slavery into a perfectly ideal condition
for the labourer, in which he would have been
insured against want, and protected in all his
personal rights by the state. He read the introduc-
tion to me last night. I didn't catch on to all the
points — his daughter 's an awfully pretty girl, and I
was carrying that fact in my mind all the time too,
you know — but that 's about the gist of it."

" Seems to regard it as a lost opportunity ? " said
March.

" Exactly ! What a mighty catchy title, heigh ?
Look well on the title-page."

" Well written ? "

238 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

" I reckon so ; I don't know. The Colonel read
it mighty eloquently."

" It mightn't be such bad business," said March,
in a muse. " Could you get me a sight of it without
committing yourself 1 "

" If the Colonel hasn't sent it off to another
publisher this morning. He just got it back
with thanks yesterday. He likes to keep it travel-
ling."

" Well, try it. I 've a notion it might be a curious
thing."

" Look here, March," said Fulkerson, with the
effect of taking a fresh hold ; "I wish you could let
me have one of those New York things of yours for
the first number. After all, that 's going to be the
great card."

" I couldn't, Fulkerson ; I couldn't, really. I
want to philosophise the material, and I 'm too new
to it all yet. I don't want to do merely superficial
sketches."

" Of course ! Of course ! I understand that.
Well, I don't want to hurry you. Seen that old
fellow of yours yet ? I think we ought to have that
translation in the first number ; don't you ? We
want to give 'em a notion of what we 're going to do
in that line."

"Yes," said March; "and I was going out to look
up Lindau this morning. I Ve inquired at Maroni's,
and he hasn't been there for several days. I 've
some idea perhaps he 's sick. But they gave me his
address, and I 'm going to see."

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 239

" Well, that 's right. We want the first number
to be the key-note in every way."

March shook his head. " You can't make it so.
The first number is bound to be a failure always, as
far as the representative character goes. It 's invari-
ably the case. Look at the first numbers of all the
things you 've seen started. They 're experimental,
almost amateurish, and necessarily so, not only be-
cause the men that are making them up are com-
paratively inexperienced like ourselves, but because
the material sent them to deal with is more or less
consciously tentative. People send their adventur-
ous things to a new periodical because the whole
thing is an adventure. I 've noticed that quality in
all the volunteer contributions ; it 's in the articles
that have been done to order even. No; I've
about made up my mind that if we can get one
good striking paper into the first number that will
take people's minds off the others, we shall be doing
all we can possibly hope for. I should like," Marcli
added, less seriously, " to make up three numbers
ahead, and publish the third one first."

Fulkerson dropped forward and struck his fist on
the desk. " It 's a first-rate idea. Why not do it 1 "

March laughed. " Fulkerson, I don't believe
there 's any quackish thing you wouldn't do in this
cause. From time to time I 'm thoroughly ashamed
of being connected with such a charlatan."

Fulkerson struck his hat sharply backward. " Ah,
dad burn it ! To give that thing the right kind of
start I 'd walk up and down Broadway between two

240 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

boards, with the title-page of Every Other JFeek
facsimiled on one and my name and address on

the " He jumped to his feet and shouted,

"March, I'll doit!"

" What ? "

11 1 '11 hire a lot of fellows to make mud-turtles of
themselves, and I '11 have a lot of big facsimiles of
the title-page, and I '11 paint the town red ! "

March looked aghast at him. " Oh, come, nowr
Fulkerson ! "

': I mean it. I was in London when a new man
had taken hold of the old Cornhill, and they were
trying to boom it, and they had a procession of
these mud-turtles that reached from Charing Cross
to Temple Bar. ' Cornhill Magazine. Sixpence.
Not a dull page in it.' I said to myself then that
it was the livest thing I ever saw. I respected the
man that did that thing from the bottom of my
heart. I wonder I ever forgot it. But it shows
what a shaky thing the human mind is at its best."

" You infamous mountebank ! " said March, with
great amusement at Fulkerson's access; "you call
that congeries of advertising instincts of yours the
human mind at its best ? Come, don't be so diffi-
dent, Fulkerson. Well, I 'm off to find Lindau, and
when I come back I hope Mr. Dryfoos will have you
under control. I don't suppose you '11 be quite sane
again till after the first number is out. Perhaps-
public opinion will sober you then."

" Confound it, March ! How do you think they
will take it ? I swear I 'm getting so nervous I don't

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 241

know half the time which end of me is up. I believe
if we don't get that thing out by the first of February
it '11 be the death of me."

" Couldn't wait till Washington's Birthday 1 I
was thinking it would give the day a kind of distinc-
tion, and strike the public imagination, if "

"No, I'll be dogged if I could!" Fulkerson
lapsed more and more into the parlance of his early
life in this season of strong excitement. " I believe
if Beaton lags any on the art-leg I '11 kill him."

"Well, / shouldn't mind your killing Beaton,"
said March tranquilly, as he went out.

He went over .to Third Avenue and took the
Elevated down to Chatham Square. He found the
variety of people in the car as unfailingly entertaining
as ever. He rather preferred the east side to the west
side lines, because they offered more nationalities,
conditions, and characters to his inspection. They
draw not only from the uptown American region,
but from all the vast hive of populations swarming
between them and the East Kiver. He had found
that, according to the hour, American husbands
going to and from business, and American wives
going to and from shopping, prevailed on the Sixth
Avenue road, and that the most picturesque admix-
ture to these familiar aspects of human nature were
the brilliant eyes and complexions of the American
Hebrews, who otherwise contributed to the effect of
well-clad comfort and citizen-self-satisfaction of the
crowd. Now and then he had found himself in a car
mostly filled with Neapolitans from the constructions
VOL. I.— 11

242 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

far up the line, where he had read how they are
worked and fed and housed like beasts ; and listening
to the jargon of their unintelligible dialect, he had
occasion for pensive question within himself as to
what notion these poor animals formed of a free
republic from their experience of life under its con-
ditions ; and whether they found them practically
very different from those of the immemorial
brigandage and enforced complicity with rapine
under which they had been born. But, after all,
this was an infrequent effect, Ijowever massive, of
travel on the west side, whereas the east offered him
continual entertainment in like sort. The sort was
never quite so squalid. For short distances the
lowest poverty, the hardest pressed labour, must walk;
but March never entered a car without encountering
some interesting shape of shabby adversity, which
was almost always adversity of foreign birth. New
York is still popularly supposed to be in the control
of the Irish, but March noticed in these east side
travels of his what must strike every observer re-
turning to the city after a prolonged absence : the
numerical subordination of the dominant race. If
they do not out-vote them, the people of Germanic,
of Slavonic, of Pelasgic, of Mongolian stock out-
number the prepotent Celts; and March seldom
found his speculation centred upon one of these.
The small eyes, the high cheeks, the broad noses, the
puff lips, the bare, cue-filleted skulls, of Russians,
Poles, Czechs, Chinese ; the furtive glitter of Italians ;
the blonde dulness of Germans ; the cold quiet of

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 243

Scandinavians — fire under ice — were aspects that he
identified, and that gave him abundant suggestion
for the personal histories he constructed, and for the
more public-spirited reveries in which he dealt with
the future economy of our heterogeneous common-
wealth. It must be owned that he did not take
much trouble about this ; what these poor people
were thinking, hoping, fearing, enjoying, suffering ;
just where and how they lived ; who and what they
individually were — these were the matters of his
waking dreams as he stared hard at them, while the
train raced further into the gay ugliness — the shape-
less, graceless, reckless picturesqueness of the Bowery.
There were certain signs, certain facades, certain
audacities of the prevailing hideousness that always
amused him in that uproar to the eye which the
strident forms and colours made. He was interested
in the insolence with which the railway had drawn
its erasing line across the Corinthian front of an old
theatre, almost grazing its fluted pillars, and flouting
its dishonoured pediment. The colossal effigies of the
fat women and the tuft-headed Circassian girls of
cheap museums; the vistas of shabby cross streets; the
survival of an old hip-roofed house here and there at
their angles ; the Swiss chalet, histrionic decorative-
ness of the stations in prospect or retrospect ; the
vagaries of the lines that narrowed together or
stretched apart according to the width of the
avenue, but always in wanton disregard of the life
that dwelt, and bought and sold, and rejoiced or
sorrowed, and clattered or crawled, around, below,
R

244 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

above — were features of the frantic panorama that
perpetually touched his sense of humour and moved
his sympathy. Accident and then exigency seemed
the forces at work to this extraordinary effect ; the
play of energies as free and planless as those that
force the forest from the soil to the sky ; and then
the fierce straggle for survival, with the stronger
life persisting over the deformity, the mutilation,
the destruction, the decay of the weaker The
whole at moments seemed to him lawless, godless ;
the absence of intelligent, comprehensive purpose in
the huge disorder, and the violent struggle to
subordinate the result to the greater good, pene-
trated with its dumb appeal the consciousness of a
man who had always been too self-enwrapt to per-
ceive the chaos to which the individual selfishness
must always lead.

But there was still nothing definite, nothing better
than a vague discomfort, however poignant, in his
half recognition of such facts ; and he descended the
station stairs at Chatham Square, with a sense of
the neglected opportunities of painters in that
locality. He said to himself that if one of those
fellows were to see in Naples that turmoil of cars,
trucks, and teams of every sort, intershot with foot-
passengers going and coming to and from the crowded
pavements, under the web of the railroad tracks
overhead, and amidst the spectacular approach of
the streets that open into the square, he would have
it down in his sketch-book at once. He decided
simultaneously that his own local studies must be

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 245

illustrated, and that he must come with the artist
and show him just which bits to do, not knowing
that the two arts can never approach the same
material from the same point. He thought he
would particularly like his illustrator to render the
Dickensy, cockneyish quality of the shabby-genteel
ballad-seller of whom he stopped to ask his way
to the street where Lindau lived, and whom he
instantly perceived to be, with his stock in trade,
the sufficient object of an entire study by himself.
He had his ballads strung singly upon a cord against
the house wall, and held down in piles on the pave-
ment with stones and blocks of wood. Their control
in this way intimated a volatility which was not
perceptible in their sentiment. They were mostly
tragical or doleful : some of them dealt with the
wrongs of the working-man ; others appealed to a
gay experience of the high seas; but vastly the
greater part to memories and associations of an
Irish origin ; some still uttered the poetry of planta-
tion life in the artless accents of the end-man.
Where they trusted themselves, with syntax that
yielded promptly to any exigency of rhythmic art,
to the ordinary American speech, it was to strike
directly for the affections, to celebrate the domestic
ties, and, above all, to embalm the memories of
angel and martyr mothers, whose dissipated sons
deplored their sufferings too late. March thought
this not at all a bad thing in them ; he smiled in
patronage of their simple pathos ; he paid the
tribute of a laugh when the poet turned, as he some-

246 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

times did, from his conception of angel and martyr
motherhood, and portrayed the mother in her more
familiar phases of virtue and duty, with the retribu-
tive shingle or slipper in her hand. He bought a
pocketful of this literature, popular in a sense which
the most successful book can never be, and enlisted
the ballad vendor so deeply in the effort to direct
him to Lindau's dwelling by the best way that he
neglected another customer, till a sarcasm on his
absent-mindedness stung him to retort, " I 'm a-try-
ing to answer a gentleman a civil question ; that 's
where the absent-minded comes in."

It seemed for some reason to be a day of leisure
with the Chinese dwellers in Mott Street, which
March had been advised to take first. They stood
about the tops of basement stairs, and walked two
and two along the dirty pavement, with their little
hands tucked into their sleeves across their breasts,
aloof in immaculate cleanliness from the filth around
them, and scrutinising the scene with that cynical
sneer of faint surprise to which all aspects of our
civilisation seem to move their superiority. Their
numbers gave character to the street, and rendered
not them, but what was foreign to them, strange
there; so that March had a sense of missionary
quality in the old Catholic church, built long before
their incursion was dreamt of. It seemed to have
come to them there, and he fancied in the statued
saint that looked down from its fa9ade something
not so much tolerant as tolerated, something pro-
pitiatory, almost deprecative. It was a fancy, of

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 247

course ; the street was sufficiently peopled with
Christian children, at any rate, swarming and
shrieking at their games ; and presently a Chris-
tian mother appeared, pushed along by two police-
men on a handcart, with a gelatinous tremor over
the paving and a gelatinous jouncing at the curb-
stones. She lay with her face to the sky, sending
up an inarticulate lamentation ; but the indifference
of the officers forbade the notion of tragedy in her
case. She was perhaps a local celebrity; the children
left off their games, and ran gaily trooping after her;
even the young fellow and young girl exchanging
playful blows in a robust flirtation at the corner of a
liquor store suspended their scuffle with a pleased
interest as she passed. March understood the un-
willingness of the poor to leave the worst conditions
in the city for comfort and plenty in the country
when he reflected upon this dramatic incident, one
of many no doubt which daily occur to entertain
them in such streets. A small town could rarely
offer anything comparable to it, and the country
never. He said that if life appeared so hopeless to
him as it must to the dwellers in that neighbour-
hood he should not himself be willing to quit its
distractions, its alleviations, for the vague promise
of unknown good in the distance somewhere.

But what charm could such a man as Lindau find
in such a place ? It could not be that he lived there
because he was too poor to live elsewhere : with
a shutting of the heart, March refused to believe
this as he looked round on the abounding evidences

248 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

of misery, and guiltily remembered his neglect of
his old friend. Lindau could probably find as cheap
a lodging in some decenter part of the town ; and
in fact there was some amelioration of the prevailing
squalor in the quieter street which he turned into
from Mott.

A woman with a tied-up face of toothache opened
the door for him when he pulled, with a shiver of
foreboding, the bell knob, from which a yard of
rusty crape dangled. But it was not Lindau who
was dead, for the woman said he was at home, and
sent March stumbling up the four or five dark flights
of stairs that led to his tenement. It was quite at the
top of the house, and when March obeyed the
German-English " Komm ! " that followed his knock,
he found himself in a kitchen where a meagre
breakfast was scattered in stale fragments on the
table before the stove. The place was bare and
cold ; a half-empty beer bottle scarcely gave it a
convivial air. On the left from this kitchen was a
room with a bed in it, which seemed also to be a
cobbler's shop : on the right, through a door that
stood ajar, came the German-English voice again,
saying this time, " Hier 1 "

XII.

MARCH pushed the door open into a room like
that on the left, but with a writing-desk instead of
a cobbler's bench, and a bed, where Lindau sat
propped up, with a coat over his shoulders and a
skull-cap on his head, reading a book, from which
he lifted his eyes to stare blankly over his spectacles
at March. His hairy old breast showed through the
night-shirt, which gaped apart ; the stump of his
left arm lay upon the book to keep it open.

" Ah, my tear yo'ng friendt ! Passil ! Marge !
Iss it you 1 " he called out joyously, the next
moment.

" Why, are you sick, Lindau 1 " March anxiously
scanned his face in taking his hand.

Lindau laughed. " No ; I 'm all righdt. Only a
lidtle lazy, and a lidtle eggonomigal. Idt's jeaper
to stay in pedt sometimes as to geep a fire a-goin'
all the time. Don't wandt to gome too hardt on the
'bvafer Mann, you know :

" Braver Mann, er schafft mir zu essen."

You remember ? Heine ? You readt Heine still 1
Who is your favourite boet now, Passil ? You write
11*

250 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

some boetry yourself yet 1 No 1 "Well, I am gladt
to zee you. Brush those baperss off of that jair.
Well, idt is goodt for zore eyess. How didt you
findt where I lif 1 "

" They told me at Maroni's," said March. He
tried to keep his eyes on Lindau's face, and not see
the discomfort of the room, but he was aware of
the shabby and frowsy bedding, the odour of stale
smoke, and the pipes and tobacco shreds mixed
with the books and manuscripts strewn over the leaf
of the writing-desk. He laid down on the mass the
pile of foreign magazines he had brought under his
arm. " They gave me another address first."

"Yes. I have chust gome here," said Lindau.
" Idt is not very cay, heigh 1 "

" It might be gayer," March admitted, with a
smile. " Still," he added soberly, " a good many
people seem to live in this part of the town. Appa-
rently they die here too, Lindau. There is crape on
your ojitside door. I didn't know but it was for you."

" Xodt this time," said Lindau, in the same
humour. " Berhaps some other time. We geep the
ondertakers bretty pusy down here."

"Well," said March, "undertakers must live, even
if the rest of us have to die to let them." Lindau
laughed, and March went on : " But I 'm glad it
isn't your funeral, Lindau. And you say you 're not
sick, and so I don't see why we shouldn't come to
business."

" Pusiness 1 " Lindau lifted his eyebrows. " You
gome on pusiness 1 "

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 251

"And pleasure combined," said March, and he
went on to explain the service he desired at
Lindau's hands.

The old man listened with serious attention, and
with assenting nods that culminated in a spoken
expression of his willingness to undertake the trans-
lations. March waited with a sort of mechanical
expectation of his gratitude for the work put in his
way, but nothing of the kind came from Lindau,
and March was left to say, " Well, everything is
understood, then ; and I don't know that I need
add that if you ever want any little advance on the
work "

" I will ask you," said Lindau quietly, " and I
thank you for that. But I can wait ; I ton't needt
any money just at bresent." As if he saw some
appeal for greater frankness in March's eye, he went
on : "I tidn't gome here begause I was too boor to
lif anywhere else, and I ton't stay in pedt begause
I couldn't haf a fire to geep warm if I wanted it-
I 'm nodt zo padt off as Marmontel when he went to
Paris, i 'in a lidtle loaxurious, that is all. If I stay
in pedt it 's zo I can fling money away on some-
things else. Heigh 1 "

" But what are you living here for, Lindau ? "
March smiled at the irony lurking in Lindau's
words.

" Well, you zee, I foundt I was begoming a lidtle
too moch of an aristograt. I hadt a room oap in
Creenvidge Willage, among dose pig pugs over on
the west side, and I foundt" — Lindau's voice lost

252 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

its jesting quality, and his face darkened — " that I
was beginning to forget the boor ! "

" I should have thought," said March, with im-
partial interest, " that you might have seen poverty
enough, now and then, in Greenwich Village to
remind you of its existence."

" Nodt like here," said Lindau. " Andt you must
zee it all the dtime — zee it, hear it, smell it, dtaste
it — or you forget it. That is what I gome here for.
I was begoming a ploated aristograt. I thought I
was nodt like these beople down here, when I gome
down once to look aroundt; I thought I must be
somethings else, and zo I zaid I better take myself
in time, and I gome here among my brothers — the
beccars and the thiefs ! " A noise made itself heard
in the next room, as if the door were furtively
opened, and a faint sound of tiptoeing and of hands
clawing on a table. " Thiefs ! " Lindau repeated,
with a shout. "Lidtle thiefs, that gabture your
breakfast. Ah ! ha ! ha ! " A wild scurrying of
feet, joyous cries and tittering, and a slamming door
followed upon his explosion, and he resumed in the
silence: "Idtis the children cot pack from school.
They gome and steal what I leaf there on my daple.
Idt 's one of our lidtle chokes ; we onderstand each
other; that's all righdt. Once the goppler in the
other room there he used to chase 'em ; he couldn't
onderstand their lidtle tricks. Now dot goppler's
teadt, and he ton't chase 'em any more. He was a
Bohemian. Gindt of grazy, I cuess."

" Well, it 's a sociable existence," March suggested.

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 253

"But perhaps if you Ijet them have the things
without stealing —

" Oh no, no ! Most nodt mage them too gonceitedt.
They mostn't go and feel themselfs petter than
those boor millionairss that hadt to steal their
money."

March smiled indulgently at his old friend's vio-
lence. "Oh, there are fagots and fagots, you
know, Lindau ; perhaps not all the millionaires
are so guilty."

" Let us speak German," cried Lindau, in his own
tongue, pushing his book aside, and thrusting his
skull-cap back from his forehead. " How much
money can a man honestly earn without wronging
or oppressing some other man ? "

" Well, if you '11 let me answer in English," said
March, " I should say about five thousand dollars a
year. I name that figure because it 's my experience
that I never could earn more ; but the experience of
other men may be different, and if they tell me they
can earn ten, or twenty, or fifty thousand a year,
I'm not prepared to say they can't do it."

Lindau hardly waited for his answer. " Not the
most gifted man that ever lived, in the practice of
any art or science, and paid at the highest rate that
exceptional genius could justly demand from those
who have worked for their money, could ever earn a
million dollars. It is the landlords and the merchant
princes, the railroad kings and the coal barons (the
oppressors to whom you instinctively give the titles of
tyrants) — it is these that make the millions, but no

254 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

man earns them. What artist, what physician, what
scientist, what poet was ever a millionaire 1 "

"I can only think of the poet Rogers," said March,
amused by Lindau's tirade. " But he was as excep-
tional as the other Rogers, the martyr, who died
with warm feet." Lindau had apparently not under-
stood his joke, and he went on, with the American
ease of mind about everything : " But you must
allow, Lindau, that some of those fellows don't do
so badly with their guilty gains. Some of them
give work to armies of poor people —

Lindau furiously interrupted. " Yes, when they
have gathered their millions together from the
hunger and cold and nakedness and ruin and
despair of hundreds of thousands of other men, they
' give work ' to the poor ! They give work ! They
allow their helpless brothers to earn enough to keep
life in them ! They give work ! Who is it gives toil,
and where will your rich men be when once the
poor shall refuse to give toil ? Why, you have come
to give me work ! "

March laughed outright. " Well, I 'm not a
millionaire, anyway, Lindau, and I hope you won't
make an example of me by refusing to give toil. I
dare say the millionaires deserve it, but I 'd rather
they wouldn't suffer in my person."

" No," returned the old man, mildly relaxing the
fierce glare he had bent upon March. "No man
deserves to suffer at the hands of another. I lose
myself when I think of the injustice in the world.
But I must not forget that I am like the worst of
them."

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 255

" You might go up Fifth Avenue and live among
the rich awhile, when you're in danger of that,"
suggested March. " At any rate," he added, by an
impulse which he knew he could not justify to his
wife, "I wish you 'd come some day and lunch with
their emissary. I 've been telling Mrs. March about
you, and I want her and the children to see you.
Come over with these things and report." He put
his hand on the magazines as he rose.

"I will come," said Lindau gently.

" Shall I give you your book ? " asked March.

" No ; I gidt oap bretty soon."

" And — and — can you dress yourself 1 "

" I vhistle, and one of those lidtle fellowss comess.
We haf to dake gare of one another in a blace like
this. Idt iss nodt like the worldt," said Lindau
gloomily

March thought he ought to cheer him up. " Oh,
it isn't such a bad world, Lindau ! After all, the
average of millionaires is small in it." He added,
" And I don't believe there 's an American living
that could look at that arm of yours and not wish
to lend you a hand for the one you gave us all."
March felt this to be a fine turn, and his voice
trembled slightly in saying it.

Lindau smiled grimly. " You think zo 1 I
wouldn't moch like to drost 'em. I've driedt idt
too often." He began to speak German again
fiercely : " Besides, they owe me nothing. Do you
think I knowingly gave my hand to save this
oligarchy of traders and tricksters, this aristocracy

256 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

of railroad wreckers and stock gamblers and mine-
slave drivers and mill-serf owners 1 No ; I gave it
to the slave ; the slave — ha ! ha ! ha ! — whom I
helped to unshackle to the common liberty of
hunger and cold. And you think I would be the
beneficiary of such a state of things 1"

"I'm sorry to hear you talk so, Lindau," said
March ; "very sorry." He stopped with a look of
pain, and rose to go. Lindau suddenly broke into
a laugh and into English.

" Oh, well, it is only dalk, Passil, and it toes me
goodt. My parg is worse than my pidte, I cuess.
I pring these things roundt bretty soon. Good-bye,
Passil, my tear poy. Auf iciedersehen / "

XIII.

MARCH went away thinking of what Lindau had
said, but not for the impersonal significance of his
words so much as for the light they cast upon
Lindau himself. He thought the words violent
enough, but in connection with what he remembered
of the cheery, poetic, hopeful idealist, they were
even more curious than lamentable. In his own life
of comfortable reverie he had never heard any one
talk so before, but he had read something of the
kind now and then in blatant labour newspapers
which he had accidentally fallen in with, and once at
a strikers' meeting he had heard rich people de-
nounced with the same frenzy. He had made his
own reflections upon the tastelessness of the rhetoric,
and the obvious buncombe of the motive, and he
had not taken the matter seriously.

He could not doubt Lindau's sincerity, and he
wondered how he came to that way of thinking.
From his experience of himself he accounted for a
prevailing literary quality in it ; he decided it to be
from Lindau's reading and feeling rather than his
reflection. That was the notion he formed of some

258 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

things he had met with in Euskin to much the same
effect; he regarded them with amusement as the
chimeras of a rhetorician run away with by his
phrases.

But as to Lindau, the chief thing in his mind was
a conception of the droll irony of a situation in
which so fervid a hater of millionaires should be
working, indirectly at least, for the prosperity of a
man like Dryfoos, who, as March understood, had
got his money together out of every gambler's
chance in speculation, and all a schemer's thrift
from the error and need of others. The situation
was not more incongruous, however, than all the
rest of the Every Other Week affair. It seemed to
him that there were no crazy fortuities that had not
tended to its existence, and as time went on, and
the day drew near for the issue of the first number,
the sense of this intensified till the whole lost at
moments the quality of a waking fact, and came to
be rather a fantastic fiction of sleep.

Yet the heterogeneous forces did co-operate to
a reality which March could not deny, at least in
their presence, and the first number was representa-
tive of all their nebulous intentions in a tangible
form. As a result, it was so respectable that
March began to respect these intentions, began
to respect himself for combining and embodying
them in the volume which appealed to him with
a novel fascination, when the first advance copy
was laid upon his desk. Every detail of it was
tiresomely familiar already, but the whole had a

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 259

fresh interest now. He now saw how extremely
fit and effective Miss Leighton's decorative design
for the cover was, printed in black and brick-red on
the delicate grey tone of the paper. It was at once
attractive and refined, and he credited Beaton with
quite all he merited in working it over to the actual
shape. The touch and the taste of the art editor
were present throughout the number. As Fulker-
son said, Beaton had caught on with the delicacy of
a humming-bird and the tenacity of a bull-dog to
the virtues of their illustrative process, and had
worked it for all it was worth. There were seven
papers in the number, and a poem on the last page
of the cover, and he had found some graphic com-
ment for each. It was a larger proportion than
would afterward be allowed, but for once in a way
it was allowed. Fulkerson said they could not expect
to get their money back on that first number anyway.
Seven of the illustrations were Beaton's ; two or three
he got from practised hands ; the rest were the
work of unknown people which he had suggested,
and then related and adapted with unfailing in-
genuity to the different papers. He handled the
illustrations with such sympathy as not to destroy
their individual quality, and that indefinable
charm which comes from good amateur work in
whatever art. He rescued them from their weak-
nesses and errors, while he left in them the evi-
dence of the pleasure with which a clever young
man, or a sensitive girl, or a refined woman had

done them. Inevitably from his manipulation,

S

260 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

however, the art of the number acquired homo-
geneity, and there was nothing casual in its ap-
pearance. The result, March eagerly owned, was
better than the literary result, and he foresaw that
the number would be sold and praised chiefly for
its pictures. Yet he was not ashamed of the litera-
ture, and he indulged his admiration of it the more
freely because he had not only not written it, but
in a way had not edited it. To be sure, he had
chosen all the material, but he had not voluntarily
put it all together for that number ; it had largely
put itself together, as every number of every
magazine does, and as it seems more and more to
do, in the experience of every editor. There had to
be, of course, a story, and then a sketch of travel.
There was a literary essay and a social essay ; there
was a dramatic trifle, very- gay, very light ; there
was a dashing criticism on the new pictures, the new
plays, the new books, the new fashions ; and then
there was the translation of a bit of vivid Russian
realism, which the editor owed to Lindau's explora-
tion of the foreign periodicals left with him ; Lindau
was himself a romanticist of the Victor Hugo sort,
but he said this fragment of Dostoyevski was good
of its kind. The poem was a bit of society verse,
with a backward look into simpler and wholesomer
experiences.

Fulkerson was .extremely proud of the number;
but he said it was too good — too good from every
point of view. The cover was too good, and the
paper was too good, and that device of rough edges,

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 261

which got over the objection to uncut leaves while it
secured their aesthetic effect, was a thing that he
trembled for, though he rejoiced in it as a stroke of
the highest genius. It had come from Beaton at
the last moment, as a compromise, when the problem,
of the vulgar croppiness of cut leaves and the
unpopularity of uncut leaves seemed to have no
solution but suicide. Fulkerson was still morally
crawling round on his hands and knees, as he said,
in abject gratitude at Beaton's feet, though he had
his qualms, his questions ; and he declared that
Beaton was the most inspired ass since Balaam's.
" We 're all asses, of course," he admitted, in semi-
apology to March ; " but we 're no such asses as
Beaton." He said that if the tasteful decorativeness
of the thing did not kill it with the public outright,
its literary excellence would give it the finishing
stroke. Perhaps that might be overlooked in the
impression of novelty which a first number would
give, but it must never happen again. He implored
March to promise that it should never happen again ;
he said their only hope was in the immediate
cheapening of the whole affair. It was bad enough
to gire the public too much quantity for their
money, but to throw in such quality as that was
simply ruinous; it must be stopped. These were
the expressions of his intimate moods ; every front
that he presented to the public wore a glow of lofty,
of devout exultation. His pride in the number
gushed out in fresh bursts of rhetoric to every one
whom he could get to talk with him about it. He

262 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

worked the personal kindliness of the press to the
utmost. He did not mind making himself ridiculous
or becoming a joke in the good cause, as he called it.
He joined in the applause when a humorist at the
club feigned to drop dead from his chair at Fulker-
son's introduction of the topic, and he went on talk-
ing that first number into the surviving spectators.
He stood treat upon all occasions, and he lunched
attaches of the press at all hours. He especially
befriended the correspondents of the newspapers of
other cities, for, as he explained to March, those
fellows could give him any amount of advertising
simply as literary gossip. Many of the fellows
were ladies who could not be so summarily asked
out to lunch, but Fulkerson's ingenuity was equal to
every exigency, and he contrived somehow to
make each of these feel that she had been possessed
of exclusive information. There was a moment
when March. conjectured a willingness in Fulker-
son to work Mrs. March into the advertising depart-
ment, by means of a tea to these ladies and their
friends which she should administer in his apart-
ment, but he did not encourage Fulkerson to be
explicit, and the moment passed. Afterward, when
he told his wife about it, he was astonished to find
that she would not have minded doing it for Ful-
kerson, and he experienced another proof of the
bluntness of the feminine instincts in some direc-
tions, and of the personal favour which Fulkerson
seemed to enjoy with the whole sex. This alone
was enough to account for the willingness of these

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 263

correspondents to write about the first number, but
March accused him of sending it to their addresses
with boxes of Jacqueminot roses and Huyler candy.

Fulkerson let him enjoy his joke. He said that
he would do that or anything else for the good
cause, short of marrying the whole circle of female
correspondents.

March Avas inclined to hope that if the first
number had been made too good for the country at
large, the more enlightened taste of metropolitan
journalism would invite a compensating favour for
it in New York. But first Fulkerson and then the
event proved him wrong. In spite of the quality of
the magazine, and in spite of the kindness which so
many newspaper men felt for Fulkerson, the notices
in the New York papers seemed grudging and pro-
visional to the ardour of the editor. A merit in the
work was acknowledged, and certain defects in it
for which March had trembled were ignored ; but
the critics astonished him by selecting for censure
points which he was either proud of or had never
noticed ; which being now brought to his notice
he still could not feel were faults. He owned to
Fulkerson that if they had said so and so against it,
he could have agreed with them, but that to say
thus and so was preposterous ; and that if the
advertising had not been adjusted with such generous
recognition of the claims of the different papers,
he should have known the counting-room was
at the bottom of it. As it was, he could only
attribute it to perversity or stupidity. It was

264 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

certainly stupid to condemn a magazine novelty
like Every Other Week for being novel ; and to
augur that if it failed, it would fail through its
departure from the lines on which all the other
prosperous magazines had been built, was in the
last degree perverse, and it looked malicious. The
fact that it was neither exactly a book nor a
magazine ought to be for it and not against it, since
it would invade no other field ; it would prosper on
no ground but its own.

XIV.

THE more March thought of the injustice of
the New York press (which had not, however,
attacked the literary quality of the number) the
more bitterly he resented it ; and his wife's indigna-
tion superheated his own. Every Other Week had
become a very personal affair with the whole family ;
the children shared their parents' disgust ; Bella
was outspoken in her denunciations of a venal press.
Mrs. March saw nothing but ruin ahead, and began
tacitly to plan a retreat to Boston, and an establish-
ment retrenched to the basis of two thousand a
year. She shed some secret tears in anticipation
of the privations which this must involve ; but
when Fulkerson came to see March rather late the
night of the publication day, she nobly told him
that if the worst came to the worst she could only
have the kindliest feeling toward him, and should
not regard him as in the slightest degree responsible.

" Oh, hold on, hold on ! " he protested. " You
don't think we Ve made a failure, do you ? "

"Why, of course," she faltered, while March re-
mained gloomily silent.

" Well, I guess we '11 wait for the official count, ,
VOL. I.— 12

266 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

first. Even New York hasn't gone against us, and
I guess there 's a majority coming down to Harlem
River that could sweep everything before it, anyway."

" What do you mean, Fulkerson 1 " March de-
manded sternly.

" Oh, nothing ! Only, the News Company has
ordered ten thousand now ; and you know we had
to give them the first twenty on commission."

" What do you mean 1 " March repeated ; his wife
held her breath.

"I mean that the first number is a booming
success already, and that it 's going to a hundred
thousand before it stops. That unanimity and
variety of censure in the morning papers, combined
with the attractiveness of the thing itself, has
cleared every stand in the city, and now if the favour
of the country press doesn't turn the tide against us,
our fortune's made." The Marches remained dumb.
" Why, look here ! Didn't I tell you those criticisms
would be the making of us, when they first began to
turn you blue this morning, March ? "

"He came home to lunch perfectly sick," said Mrs.
March ; " and I wouldn't let him go back again."

" Didn't I tell you so ? " Fulkerson persisted.

March could not remember that he had, or that
he had been anything but incoherently and hysteric-
ally jocose over the papers, but he said, " Yes, yes —
I think so."

" I knew it from the start," said Fulkerson. " The
only other person who took those criticisms in the
right spirit was Mother Dryfoos — I've just been

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 267

bolstering up the Dryfoos family. She had them,
fead to her by Mrs. Mandel, and she understood
them to be all the most flattering prophecies of
success. Well, I didn't read between the lines to
that extent, quite ; but I saw that they were going

1 to help us, if there was anything in us, more than
anything that could have been done. And there
was something in us ! I tell you, March, that seven-
shooting self-cocking donkey of a Beaton has given
us the greatest start ! He 's caught on like a mice.
He 's made the thing awfully cJiic ; it 's jimmy ;
there 's lots of dog about it. He 's managed that
process so that the illustrations look as expensive as
first-class wood-cuts, and they're cheaper than
chromos. He 's put style into the whole thing."

" Oh yes," said March with eager meekness, " it 's
Beaton that's done it."

Fulkerson read jealousy of Beaton in Mrs. March's
face. " Beaton has given us the start because his
work appeals to the eye. There 's no denying that
the pictures have sold this first number; but I
expect the literature of this first number to sell the
pictures of the second. I 've been reading it all over,
nearly, since I found how the cat was jumping; I
was anxious about it, and I tell you, old man, it's
good. Yes, sir ! I was afraid may be you had got it
too good, with that Boston refinement of yours ; but
I reckon you haven't. 1 11 risk it. I don't see how
you got so much variety into so few things, and all
of them palpitant, all of 'em on the keen jump with

^actuality."

268 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

The mixture of American slang with the jargon
of European criticism in Fulkerson's talk made March
smile, but his wife did not seem to notice it in her
exultation. " That is just what I say," she broke in.
" It 's perfectly wonderful. I never was anxious
about it a moment, except, as you say, Mr. Fulker-
son, I was afraid it might be too good.''

They went on in an antiphony of praise till March
said, "Really, I don't see what's left me but to
strike for higher wages. I perceive that I'm
indispensable."

" Why, old man, you 're coming in on the diwy,
you know," said Fulkerson.

They both laughed, and when Fulkerson was
gone, Mrs. March asked her husband what a diwy
was.

" It 's a chicken before it 's hatched "

" No ! Truly 1 "

He explained, and she began to spend the diwy.

At Mrs. Leighton's Fulkerson gave Alma all the
honour of the success ; he told her mother that the
girl's design for the cover had sold every number,
and Mrs. Leighton believed him.

"Well, Ah think Ah maght have some of the
glory," Miss Woodburn pouted. "Where am Ah
comin' in ? "

"You're coming in on the cover of the next
number," said Fulkerson. " We 're going to have
your face there ; Miss Leighton's going to sketch it
in." He said this reckless of the fact that he had
already shown them the design of the second

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 269

number which was Beaton's weird bit of gas-country
landscape.

"Ah don't see why you don't wrahte the fiction
for your magazine, Mr. Fulkerson," said the girl.

This served to remind Fulkerson of something.
He turned to her father. "I'll tell you what,
Colonel Woodburn, I want Mr. March to see some
chapters of that book of yours. I 've been talking
to him about it."

" I do not think it would add to the popularity
of your periodical, sir," said the Colonel, with a
stately pleasure in being asked. "My views of a
civilisation based upon responsible slavery would
hardly be acceptable to your commercialised society."

"Well, not as a practical thing, of course,"
Fulkerson admitted. "But as something retro-
spective, speculative, I believe it would make a hit.
There's so much going on now about social ques-
tions; I guess people would like to read it."

" I do not know that my work is intended to
amuse people," said the Colonel, with some state.

"Mah goodness! Ah only wish it was, then,"
said his daughter; and she added: "Yes, Mr.
Fulkerson, the Colonel will be very glad to submit
po'tions of his woak to yo' edito'. We want to have
some of the honaw. Perhaps we can say we helped
to stop yo' magazine, if we didn't help to stawt it."

They all laughed at her boldness, and Fulkerson
said, " It '11 take a good deal more than that to stop
Every Other Week. The Colonel's whole book
couldn't do it." Then he looked unhappy, for

270 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

Colonel Woodburn did not seem to enjoy his re-
assuring words ; but Miss Woodburn came to his
rescue. " You maght illustrate it with the po'trait of
the awthor's daughtaw, if it's too late for the covah."

"Going to have that in every number, Miss
Woodburn," he cried.

" Oh, mah goodness ! " she said, with mock
humility.

Alma sat looking at her piquant head, black,
unconsciously outlined against the lamp, as she sat
working by the table. " Just keep still a moment!"

She got her sketch-block and pencils, and began
to draw; Fulkerson tilted himself forward and
looked over her shoulder ; he smiled outwardly ;
inwardly he was divided between admiration of
Miss Woodburn's arch beauty and appreciation of
the skill which reproduced it ; at the same time
he was trying to remember whether March had
authorised him to go so far as to ask for a sight
of Colonel Woodburn's manuscript. He felt that
he had trenched upon March's province, and he
framed one apology to the editor for bringing him
the manuscript, and another to the author for
bringing it back

"Most Ah hold raght still like it was a photo-
graph ? " asked Miss Woodburn, " Can Ah toak ? *

"Talk all you want," said Alma, squinting her
eyes. " And you needn't be either adamantine, nor
yet — wooden."

" Oh, ho' very good of you ! Well, if Ah can
toak — go on, Mr. Fulkerson ! "

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 271

" Me talk ? I can't breathe till this thing is
done ! " sighed Fulkerson ; at that point of his
mental ' drama the Colonel was behaving rustily
about the return of his manuscript, and he felt that
he was looking his last on Miss Woodburn's profile.

" Is she getting it raght ? " asked the girl.

" I don't know which is which," said Fulkerson.

" Oh, Ah hope Ah shall ! I don't want to go
round feelin' like a sheet of papah half the time."

" You could rattle on, just the same," suggested
Alma.

" Oh, now ! Jost listen to that, Mr. Fulkerson.
Do you call that any way to toak to people ? "

" You might know which you were by the
colour," Fulkerson began, and then he broke off
from the personal consideration with a business
inspiration, and smacked himself on the knee : " We
could print it in colour ! "

Mrs. Leighton gathered up her sewing and held
it with both hands in her lap, while she came round,
and looked critically at the sketch and the model
over her glasses. " It 's very good, Alma," she said.

Colonel Woodburn remained restively on his side
of the table. " Of course, Mr. Fulkerson, you were
jesting, sir, when you spoke of printing a sketch of
my daughter."

"Why, I don't know If you object "

" I do, sir — decidedly," said the Colonel.

" Then that settles it, of course," said Fulkerson.
" I only meant "

" Indeed it doesn't ! " cried the girl. " Who 's to

272 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

know who it 's from ? Ah 'm jost set on havin* it
printed ! Ah 'm going to appear as the head of
Slavery — in opposition to the head of Liberty."

" There '11 be a revolution inside of forty-eight
hours, and we '11 have the Colonel's system going
wherever a copy of Every Other Week circulates,"
said Fulkerson.

"This sketch belongs to me," Alma interposed.
" I 'm not going to let it be printed."

" Oh, mah goodness ! " said Miss Woodburn,
laughing good-hum ouredly. " That 's becose you
were brought up to hate slavery."

" I should like Mr. Beaton to see it," said Mrs.
Leighton in a sort of absent tone. She added, to
Fulkerson : " I rather expected he might be in to-
night."

" Well, if he comes we '11 leave it to Beaton,"
Fulkerson said, with relief in the solution, and an
anxious glance at the Colonel, across the table, to
see how he took that form of the joke. Miss
Woodburn intercepted his glance and laughed, and
Fulkerson laughed too, but rather forlornly.

Alma set her lips primly and turned her head
first on one side and then on the other to look at
the sketch. " I don't think we '11 leave it to Mr.
Beaton, even if he comes."

"We left the other design for the cover to
Beaton," Fulkerson insinuated. " I guess you
needn't be afraid of him."

" Is it a question of my being afraid ? " Alma
asked ; she seemed coolly intent on her drawing.

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 273

"Miss Leighton thinks he ought to be afraid of
her," Miss Woodburn explained.

" It 's a question of his courage, then ? " said Alma.

"Well, I don't think there are many young ladies
that Beaton 's afraid of," said Fulkerson, giving him-
self the respite of this purely random remark, while
he interrogated the faces of Mrs. Leighton and
Colonel Woodburn for some light upon the tendency
of their daughters' words.

He was not helped by Mrs. Leighton's saying,
with a certain anxiety, "I don't know what you
mean, Mr. Fulkerson."

" Well, you 're as much in the dark as I am my-
self, then," said Fulkerson. "I suppose I meant
that Beaton is rather — a — favourite, you know.
The women like him."

Mrs. Leighton sighed, and Colonel Woodburn rose
and left the room.
12*

XV.

1 IN the silence that followed, Fulkerson looked
from one lady to the other with dismay. " I seem to
have put my foot in it, somehow," he suggested, and
Miss Woodburn gave a cry of laughter.

" Poo' Mr. Fulkerson ! Poo' Mr. Fulkerson !
Papa thoat you wanted him to go."

" Wanted him to go ? " repeated Fulkerson.

" We always mention Mr. Beaton when we want
to get rid of papa."

"Well, it seems to me that I have noticed that
he didn't take much interest in Beaton, as a general
topic. But I don't know that I ever saw it drive
him out of the room before ! "

" Well, he isn't always so bad," said Miss Wood-
burn. " But it was a case of hate at first sight, and
it seems to be growin' on papa."

" Well, I can understand that," said Fulkerson.
" The impulse to destroy Beaton is something thafc
everybody has to struggle against at the start"

" I must say, Mr. Fulkerson," said Mrs. Leighton
in the tremor through which she nerved herself to
differ openly with any one she liked, "I never had
to struggle with anything of the kind, in regard to

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 275

Mr. Beaton. He has always been most respectful
and — and considerate, with me, whatever he has
been with others."

" Well, of course, Mrs. Leighton ! " Fulkerson
came back in a soothing tone. " But you see you 're
the rule that proves the exception. I was speaking
of the way men felt about Beaton. It 's different
with ladies ; I just said so."

"Is it always different ? " Alma asked, lifting her
head and her hand from her drawing, and staring at
it absently.

Fulkerson pushed his hands both through his
whiskers. " Look here ! Look here ! " he said.
" Won't somebody start some other subject ? We
haven't had the weather up yet, have we ? Or the
opera 1 What is the matter with a few remarks
about politics ? "

" Why I thoat you lahked to toak about the staff
of yo' magazine," said Miss Woodburn.

"Oh, I do!" said Fulkerson. " But not always
about the same member of it. He gets monotonous,
when he doesn't get complicated. I Ve just come
round from the Marches'," he added, to Mrs. Leighton.

" I suppose they Ve got thoroughly settled in
their apartment by this time." Mrs. Leighton said
something like this whenever the Marches were
mentioned. At the bottom of her heart she had not
forgiven them for not taking her rooms ; she had
liked their looks so much ; and she was always
hoping that they were uncomfortable or dissatisfied ;
she could not help wanting them punished a little.
T

276 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

"Well, yes; as much as they ever will be,"
Fulkerson answered. " The Boston style is pretty
different, you know; and the Marches are old-
fashioned folks, and I reckon they never went in
much for bric-a-brac. They Ve put away nine or
ten barrels of dragon candlesticks, but they keep
finding new ones."

" Their landlady has just joined our class," said
Alma. " Isn't her name Green ? She happened to
see my copy of Every Other Week, and said she knew
the editor ; and told me."

" Well, it 's a little world," said Fulkerson. " You
seem to be touching elbows with everybody. Just
think of your having had our head translator for a
model."

" Ah think that your whole publication revolves
aroand the Leighton family," said Miss Woodburn.

"That's pretty much so," Fulkerson admitted.
" Anyhow, the publisher seems disposed to do so."

" Are you the publisher ? I thought it was Mr.
Dryfoos," said Alma.

"It is."

"Oh!"

The tone and the word gave Fulkerson a dis-
comfort which he promptly confessed. "Missed
again."

The girls laughed, and he regained something of
his lost spirits, and smiled upon their gaiety, which
lasted beyond any apparent reason for it.

Miss Woodburn asked, "And is Mr. Dryfoos
senio' anything like ouah Mr. Dryfoos ] "

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 277

"Not the least."

" But he 's jost as exemplary ? "

"Yes; in his way."

" Well, Ah wish Ah could see all those pinks of
puffection togethath, once."

"Why, look here ! I 've been thinking I 'd celebrate
a little, when the old gentleman gets back. Have a
little supper — something of that kind. How would
you like to let me have your parlours for it, Mrs.
Leighton ? You ladies could stand on the stairs,
and have a peep at us, in the bunch."

" Oh, mah ! What a privilege ! And will Miss
Alma be there, with the othah contributors 1 Ah
shall jost expah of envy ! "

"She won't be there in person," said Fulkerson,
" but she '11 be represented by the head of the art
department."

" Mah goodness ! And who '11 the head of the
publishing department represent 1 "

" He can represent you," said Alma.

"Well, Ah want to be represented, someho'."

"We'll have the banquet the night before you
appear on the cover of our fourth number," said
Fulkerson.

"Ah thoat that was doubly fo'bidden," said Miss
Woodburn. " By the stern parent and the envious
awtust."

" We '11 get Beaton to get round them, somehow.
I guess we can trust him to manage that."

Mrs. Leighton sighed her resentment of the
implication.

278 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

" I always feel that Mr. Beaton doesn't do him-
self justice," she began.

Fulkerson could not forego the chance of a joke.
" Well, may be he would rather temper justice with
mercy in a case like his." This made both the
younger ladies laugh. " I judge this is my chance
to get off with my life," he added, and he rose as he
spoke. " Mrs. Leighton, I am about the only man
of my sex who doesn't thirst for Beaton's blood
most of the time. But I know him and I don't.
He 's more kinds of a good fellow than people gener-
ally understand. He don't wear his heart upon his
sleeve — not his ulster sleeve, anyway. You can
always count me on your side when it 's a question
of finding Beaton not guilty if he '11 leave the State."

Alma set her drawing against the wall, in rising
to say good night to Fulkerson. He bent over on
his stick to look at it. "Well, it's beautiful," he
sighed, with unconscious sincerity.

Alma made him a courtesy of mock modesty.
" Thanks to Miss Woodburn."

" Oh no ! All she had to do was simply to
stay put."

" Don't you think Ah might have improved it if
Ah had looked better ? " the girl asked gravely.

" Oh, you couldn't ! " said Fulkerson, and he went
off triumphant in their applause and their cries of
"Which? which?"

Mrs. Leighton sank deep into an accusing gloom
when at last she found herself alone with her
daughter. "I don't know what you are thinking

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 279

about, Alma Leightou. If you don't like Mr.
Beaton "

"I don't."

" You don't ? You know better than that. You
know that you did care for him."

" Oh ! that 's a very different thing. That 's a
thing that can be got over."

" Got over ! " repeated Mrs. Leighton, aghast.

" Of course, it can ! Don't be romantic, mamma.
People get over dozens of such fancies. They even
marry for love two or three times."

" Never ! " cried her mother, doing her best to
feel shocked, and at last looking it.

Her looking it had no effect upon Alma. " You
can easily get over caring for people ; but you can't
get over liking them — if you like them because they
are sweet and good. That's what lasts. I was a
simple goose, and he imposed upon me because he
was a sophisticated goose. Now the case is reversed.'*

" He does care for you, now. You can see it.
Why do you encourage him to come here 1 "

"I don't," said Alma. "I will tell him to keep
away if you like. But whether he comes or goes, it
will be the same."

" Not to him, Alma ! He is in love with you ! "

" He has never said so."

" And you would really let him say so, when you
intend to refuse him ? "

"I can't very well refuse him till he does say so."

This was undeniable. Mrs. Leighton could only
demand in an awful tone, " May I ask why — if you

280 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

cared for him ; and I know you care for him still —
you will refuse him 1 "

Alma laughed. "Because — because I'm wedded
to my Art, and I 'm not going to commit bigamy,
whatever I do."

" Alma ! "

" Well, then, because I don't like him — that is, I
don't believe in him, and don't trust him. He's
fascinating, but he 's false and he 's fickle. He can't
help it, I dare say."

" And you are perfectly hard. Is it possible that
you were actually pleased to have Mr. Fulkerson
tease you about Mr. Dryfoos 1 "

" Oh, good night, now, mamma ! This is becom-
ing personal."

PART THIRD.
I.

THE scheme of a banquet to celebrate the initial
success of Every Other Week expanded in Fulkerson's
fancy into a series. Instead of the publishing and
editorial force, with certain of the more representa-
tive artists and authors sitting down to a modest
supper in Mrs. Leighton's parlours, he conceived of
a dinner at Delmonico's, with the principal literary
and artistic people throughout the country as guests,
and an inexhaustible hospitality to reporters and
correspondents, from whom paragraphs, prophetic
and historic, would flow weeks before and after the
first of the series. He said the thing was a new de-
parture in magazines ; it amounted to something in
literature as radical as the American Revolution in
politics : it was the idea of self-government in the
arts; and it was this idea that had never yet been
fully developed in regard to it. That was what
must be done in the speeches at the dinner, and the
speeches must be reported. Then it would go like
wildfire. He asked March whether he thought Mr.
Depew could be got to come ; Mark Twain, he was

282 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES

sure would come; he was a literary man. They
ought to invite Mr. Evarts, and the Cardinal and
the leading Protestant divines. His ambition
stopped at nothing, nothing but the question of
expense ; there he had to wait the return of the
elder Dryfoos from the West, and Dryfoos was still
delayed at Moffitt, and Fulkerson openly confessed
that he was afraid he would stay there till his own
enthusiasm escaped in other activities, other plans.

Fulkerson was as little likely as possible to fall
under a superstitious subjection to another man ; but
March could not help seeing that in this possible
measure Dryfoos was Fulkerson's fetish. He did not
revere him, March decided, because it was not in
Fulkerson's nature to revere anything ; he could like
and dislike, but he could not respect. Apparently,
however, Dryfoos daunted him somehow ; and be-
sides the homage which those who have not pay
to those who have, Fulkerson rendered Dryfoos the
tribute of a feeling which March could only define as
a sort of bewilderment. As well as March could
make out, this feeling was evoked by the spectacle
of Dryfoos's unfailing luck, which Fulkerson was fond
of dazzling himself with. It perfectly consisted with
a keen sense of whatever was sordid and selfish in a
man on whom his career must have had its inevitable
effect. He liked to philosophise the case with March,
to recall Dryfoos as he was when he first met him
still somewhat in the sap, at Moffitt, and to study
the processes by which he imagined him to have
dried into the hardened speculator, without even the

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 283

pretence to any advantage but his own in his ven-
tures. He was aware of painting the character too
vividly, and he warned March not to accept it
exactly in those tints, but to subdue them and shade
it for himself. He said that where his advantage
was not concerned, there was ever so much good
in Dryfoos, and that if in some things he had
grown inflexible, he had expanded in others to the
full measure of the vast scale on which he did busi-
ness. It had seemed a little odd to March that a
man should put money into such an enterprise as
Every Other Week and go off about other affairs, not
only without any sign of anxiety but without any
sort of interest. But Fulkerson said that was the
splendid side of Dryfoos. He had a courage, a
magnanimity, that was equal to the strain of any
such uncertainty. He had faced the music once for
all, when he asked Fulkerson what the thing would
cost in the different degrees of potential failure ; and
then he had gone off, leaving everything to Fulkerson
and the younger Dryfoos, with the instruction simply
to go ahead and not bother him about it. Fulkerson
called that pretty tall for an old fellow who used to
bewail the want of pigs and chickens to occupy his
mind. He alleged it as another proof of the versa-
tility of the American mind, and of the grandeur of
institutions and opportunities that let every man
grow to his full size, so that any man in America
could run the concern if necessary. He believed
that old Dryfoos could step into Bismarck's shoes,
and run the German Empire at ten days' notice, or

284 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

about as long as it would take him to go from New
York to Berlin. But Bismarck would not know
anything about Dryfoos's plans till Dryfoos got
ready to show his hand. Fulkerson himself did not
pretend to say what the old man had been up to,
since he -went West. He was at Moffitt first, and
then he was at Chicago, and then he had gone out to
Denver to look after some mines he had out there,
and a railroad or two ; and now he was at Moffitt
again. He was supposed to be closing up his affairs
there, but nobody could say.

Fulkerson told March the morning after Dryfoos
returned that he had not only not pulled out at
Moffitt, but had gone in deeper, ten times deeper
than ever. He was in a royal good-humour, Fulker-
son reported, and was going to drop into the office
on his way up from the street (March understood
Wall Street) that afternoon. He Avas tickled to
death with Every Other Week so far as it had gone,
and was anxious to pay his respects to the editor.

March accounted for some rhetoric in this, but let
it flatter him, and prepared himself for a meeting
about which he could see that Fulkerson was only
less nervous than he had shown himself about the
public reception of the first number. It gave March
a disagreeable feeling of being owned and of being
about to be inspected by his proprietor ; but he fell
back upon such independence as he could find in the
thought of those two thousand dollars of income be-
yond the caprice of his owner, and maintained an
outward serenity.

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 285

He was a little ashamed afterward of the resolu-
tion it had cost him to do so. It was not a question
of Dryfoos's physical presence : that was rather
effective than otherwise, and carried a suggestion of
moneyed indifference to convention in the grey
business suit of provincial cut, and the low, wide-
brimmed hat of flexible black felt. He had a stick
with an old-fashioned top of buck-horn worn smooth
and bright by the palm of his hand, which had not
lost its character in fat, and which had a history of
former work in its enlarged knuckles, though it was
now as soft as March's, and must once have been
small even for a man of Mr. Dryfoos's stature ; he
was below the average size. But what struck March
was the fact that Dryfoos seemed furtively conscious
of being a country person, and of being aware that
in their meeting he was to be tried by other tests
than those which would have availed him as a
shrewd speculator. He evidently had some curiosity
about March, as the first of his kind whom he had en-
countered ; some such curiosity as the country school
trustee feels and tries to hide in the presence of the
new schoolmaster. But the whole affair was of course
on a higher plane ; on one sid.e Dryfoos was much
more a man of the world than March was, and he
probably divined this at once, and rested himself
upon the fact in a measure. It seemed to be his
preference that his son should introduce them, for
he came upstairs with Conrad, and they had fairly
made acquaintance before Fulkerson joined them.

Conrad offered to leave them at once, but his

286 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

father made him stay. "I reckon Mr. March and
I haven't got anything so private to talk about that
we want to keep it from the other partners. Well,
Mr. March, are you getting used to New York yet 1
It takes a little time."

" Oh yes. But not so much time as most places.
Everybody belongs more or less in New York ;
nobody has to belong here altogether."

"Yes, that is so. You can try it, and go away
if you don't like it a good deal easier than you could
from a smaller place. Wouldn't make so much talk,
would it 1 " He glanced at March with a jocose
light in his shrewd eyes. " That is the way I feel
about it all the time : just visiting. Xow, it
wouldn't be that way in Boston, I reckon 1 "

" You couldn't keep on visiting there your whole
life," said March.

Dryfoos laughed, showing his lower teeth in a
way that was at once simple and fierce. " Mr.
Fulkerson didn't hardly know as he could get you
to leave. I suppose you got used to it there. I
never been in your city."

"I had got used to it; but it was hardly my
city, except by marriage. My wife 's a Bostonian."

" She 's been a little homesick here, then," said
Dryfoos, with a smile of the same quality as his
laugh.

" Less than I expected," said March. " Of course
she was very much attached to our old home/'

" I guess my wife won't ever get used to New
York," said Dryfoos, and he drew in his lower lip

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 287

with a sharp sigh. " But my girls like it ; they 're
young. You never been out our way yet, Mr.
March ? Out West 1 "

"Well, only for the purpose of being born, and
brought up. I used to live in Crawfordsville, and
then Indianapolis."

"Indianapolis is bound to be a great place," said
Dryfoos. " I remember now, Mr. Fulkerson told me
you was from our State." He went on to brag of
the West, as if March were an Easterner and had to
be convinced. " You ought to see all that country.
It 's a great country."

" Oh yes," said March, " I understand that." He
expected the praise of the great West to lead up to
some comment on Every Other Week ; and there was
abundant suggestion of that topic in the manuscripts,
proofs of letter-press and illustrations, with advance
•copies of the latest number strewn over his table.

But Dryfoos apparently kept himself from looking
at these things. He rolled his head about on his
shoulders to take in the character of the room, and
said to his son, " You didn't change the woodwork
.after all."

" No ; the architect thought we had better let it
be, unless we meant to change the whole place. He
liked its being old-fashioned."

"I hope you feel comfortable here, Mr. March,"
the old man said, bringing his eyes to bear upon him
again after their tour of inspection.

" Too comfortable for a working-man," said March,
he thought that this remark must brine; them to

288 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

some talk about his work, but the proprietor only
smiled again.

" I guess I shan't lose much on this house," he
returned, as if musing aloud. "This down-town
property is coming up. Business is getting in on all
these side streets. I thought I paid a pretty good
price for it, too." He went on to talk of real estate,
and March began to feel a certain resentment at his
continued avoidance of the only topic in which they
could really have a common interest. " You live
down this way somewhere, don't you 1 " the old man
concluded.

"Yes. I wished to be near my work." March
was vexed with himself for having recurred to it ;
but afterward he was not sure but Dryfoos shared
his own diffidence in the matter, and was waiting for
him to bring it openly into the talk. At times he
seemed wary and masterful, and then March felt
that he was being examined and tested ; at others so
simple that March might well have fancied that he
needed encouragement, and desired it. He talked of
his wife and daughters in a way that invited March
to say friendly things of his family, which appeared
to give the old man first an undue pleasure, and
then a final distrust. At moments he turned, Avith
an effect of finding relief in it, to his son and spoke
to him across March of matters which he was un-
acquainted with ; he did not seem aware that this
was rude, but the young man must have felt it so ;
he always brought the conversation back, and once
at some cost to himself when his father made it
personal.

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 289

" I want to make a regular New York business
man out of that fellow," he said to March, pointing
at Conrad with, his stick. " You s'pose I 'm ever
going to do it ? "

"Well, I don't know," said March, trying to fall
in with the joke. "Do you mean nothing but a
business man ? "

The old man laughed at whatever latent meaning
he fancied in this, and said, " You think he would
be a little too much for me there ? Well, I Ve seen
enough of 'em to know it don't always take a large
pattern of a man to do a large business. But I want
him to get the business training, and then if he
wants to go into something else, he knows what the
world is, anyway. Heigh ? "

" Oh yes ! " March assented, with some compassion
for the young man reddening patiently under his
father's comment.

Dryfoos went on as if his son were not in hearing.
" Now that boy wanted to be a preacher. W7hat
does a preacher know about the world he preaches
against, when he 's been brought up a preacher ?
He don't know so much as a bad little boy in his
Sunday-school ; he knows about as much as a gH.
I always told him, You be a man first, and then you
be a preacher, if you want to. Heigh ? "

" Precisely." March began to feel some compas-
sion for himself in being witness of the young fellow's
discomfort under his father's homily.

" When we first come to New York, I told him,
Now here 's your chance to see the world on a big
VOL. I.— 13

290 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

scale. You know already what work and saving
and steady habits and sense will bring a man to ;
you don't want to go round among the rich ; you
want to go among the poor, and see what laziness,
and drink, and dishonesty, and foolishness will bring
men to. And I guess he knows, about as well as
anybody ; and if he ever goes to preaching he '11
know what he's preaching about." The old man
smiled his fierce, simple smile, and in his sharp eyes
March fancied contempt of the ambition he had
balked in his son. The present scene must have
been one of many between them, ending in meek
submission on the part of the young man whom his
father perhaps without realising his cruelty treated as
a child. March took it hard that he should be made
to suffer in the presence of a co-ordinate power like
himself, and began to dislike the old man out of pro-
portion to his offence, which might have been mere
want of taste, or an effect of mere embarrassment
before him. But evidently, whatever rebellion his
daughters had carried through against him, he had
kept his dominion over this gentle spirit unbroken.
March did not choose to make any response, but to
let him continue, if he would, entirely upon his
own impulse.

II.

A SILENCE followed, of rather painful length. It
was broken by the cheery voice of Fulkerson, sent
before him to herald Fulkerson's cheery person.
" Well, I suppose you 've got the glorious success of
Every Other Week down pretty cold in your talk by
this time. I should have been up sooner to join you,
but I was nipping a man for the last page of the
cover. I guess we '11 have to let the Muse have that
for an advertisement instead of a poem the next
time, March. Well, the old gentleman given you
boys your scolding 1 " The person of Fulkerson had
got into the room long before he reached this
question, and had planted itself astride a cliair.
Fulkerson looked over the chair back, now at March,
and now at the elder Dryfoos as he spoke.

March answered him. "I guess we must have
been waiting for you, Fulkerson. At any rate we
hadn't got to the scolding yet"

" Why, I didn't suppose Mr. Dryfoos could 'a' held
in so long. I understood he was awful mad at the
way the thing started off, and wanted to give you a
piece of his mind, when he got at you. I inferred
as much from a remark that he made." March and
U

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

Dryfoos looked foolish, as men do when made the
subject of this sort of merry misrepresentation.

" I reckon my scolding will keep awhile yet," said
the old man dryly.

"Well, then, I guess it's a good chance to give
Mr. Dryfoos an idea of what we Ve really done — just
while we 're resting, as Artemus Ward says. Heigh,
March ? "

" I will let you blow the trumpet, Fulkerson. I
think it belongs strictly to the advertising depart-
ment," said March. He now distinctly resented the
old man's failure to say anything to him of the
magazine ; he made his inference that it was from a
suspicion of his readiness to presume upon a recog-
nition of his share in the success, and he was deter-
mined to second no sort of appeal for it.

"The advertising department is the heart and
soul of every business," said Fulkerson hardily,
" and I like to keep my hand in with a little practice
on the trumpet in private. I don't believe Mr. Dry-
foos has got any idea of the extent of this thing.
He 's been out among those Rackensackens, where
we were all born, and he 's read the notices in their
seven by nine dailies, and he 's seen the thing selling on
the cars, and he thinks he appreciates what's been
done. But I should just like to take him round in
this little old metropolis awhile, and show him Every
Oilier Week on the centre tables of the millionaires
— the Vanderbilts and the Astors — and in the homes
of culture and refinement everywhere, and let
him judge for himself. It's the talk of the clubs

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 293

and the dinner-tables ; children cry for it ; it 's the
Castoria of literature, and the Pearline of art, the
Won't-be-happy-till-he-gets-it of every enlightened
man, woman, and child in this vast city. I knew
we could capture the country ; but, my goodness !
I didn't expect to have New York fall into our hands
at a blow. But that 's just exactly what New York
has done. Every Other Week supplies the long-felt
want that 's been grinding round in New York and
keeping it awake nights ever since the war. It's
the culmination of all the high and ennobling ideals
of the past —

" How much," asked Dryfoos, " do you expect to
get out of it the first year, if it keeps the start it 's
got?"

" Comes right down to business, every time ! " said
Fulkerson, referring the characteristic to March with
a delighted glance. " Well, sir, if everything works
right, and we get rain enough to fill up the springs,
and it isn't a grasshopper year, I expect to clear
above all expenses something in the neighbourhood
of twenty-five thousand dollars."

" Humph ! And you are all going to work a year
— editor, manager, publisher, artists, writers, printers,
and the rest of 'em — to clear twenty-five thousand
dollars 1 — I made that much in half a day in Moffitt
once. I see it made in half a minute in Wall Street,
sometimes." The old man presented this aspect of
the case with a good-natured contempt, which in-
cluded Fulkerson and his enthusiasm in an obvious
liking.

294 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

His son suggested, " But when \ve make that
money here, no one loses it."

"Can you prove that?" His father turned
sharply upon him. " Whatever is won is lost. It '&
all a game ; it don't make any difference what you
bet on. Business is business, and a business man
takes his risks with his eyes open."

" Ah, but the glory ! " Fulkerson insinuated
with impudent persiflage. "I hadn't got to the
glory yet, because it 's hard to estimate it ; but put
the glory at the lowest figure, Mr. Dryfoos, and add
it to the twenty-five thousand, and you 've got an
annual income from Every Other Week of dollars
enough to construct a silver railroad, double-track,
from this office to the moon. I don't mention any
of the sister planets because I like to keep within
bounds."

Dryfoos showed his lower teeth for pleasure in
Fulkerson's fooling, and said, " That 's what I like
about you, Mr. Fulkerson : you always keep within
bounds.",

"Well, I ain't a shrinking Boston violet, like
March here. More sunflower in my style of diffi-
dence ; but I am modest, I don't deny it," said Ful-
kerson. " And I do hate to have a thing overstated."

"And the glory — you do really think there's
something in the glory that pays ? "

" Not a doubt of it ! I shouldn't care for the
paltry return in money," said Fulkerson, with a
burlesque of generous disdain, " if it wasn't for the
glory along with it."

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 295

" And how should you feel about the glory, if
there was no money along with it ? "

" Well, sir, I 'm happy to say we haven't come to
that yet."

"Now, Conrad, here," said the old man, with a
sort of pathetic rancour, " would rather have the
glory alone. I believe he don't even care much for
your kind of glory, either, Mr. Fulkerson."

Fulkerson ran his little eyes curiously over
Conrad's face and then March's, as if searching for a
trace there of something gone before which would
enable him to reach Dryfoos's whole meaning. He
apparently resolved to launch himself upon con-
jecture. " Oh, well, we know how Conrad feels
about the things of this world, anyway. I should
like to take 'em on the plane of another sphere, too,
sometimes ; but I noticed a good while ago that this
was the world I was born into, and so I made up my
mind that I would do pretty much what I saw the
rest of the folks doing here below. And I can't see
but what Conrad runs the thing on business prin-
ciples in his department, and I guess you '11 find it so
if you look into it. I consider that we 're a whole
team and big dog under the wagon with you to draw
on for supplies, and March, here, at the head of the
literary business, and Conrad in the counting-room,
and me to do the heavy lying in the advertising part.
Oh, and Beaton, of course, in the art. I 'most for-
got Beaton — Hamlet Avith Hamlet left out."

Dryfoos looked across at his son. " "Wasn't that
the fellow's name that was there last night ? "

296 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

" Yes," said Conrad.

The old man rose. " Well, I reckon I got to be
going. You ready to go up-town, Conrad 1 "

"Well, not quite yet, father."

The old man shook hands with March, and went
downstairs, followed by his son.

Fulkerson remained.

" He didn't jump at the chance you gave him to
compliment us all round, Fulkerson," said March,
with a smile not wholly of pleasure.

Fulkerson asked with as little joy, in the grin he
had on, "Didn't he say anything to you before I
came in ? "

" Not a word."

" Dogged if I know what to make of it," sighed
Fulkerson, "but I guess he's been having a talk
with Conrad that 's soured on him. I reckon may be
he came back expecting to find that boy reconciled
to the glory of this world, and Conrad 's showed him-
self just as set against it as ever."

"It might have been that," March admitted pen-
sively. "I fancied something of the kind myself
from words the old man let drop."

Fulkerson made him explain, and then he said,
"That's it, then; and it's all right. Conrad '11
come round in time ; and all we 've got to do is to
have patience with the old man till he does. I
know he likes you." Fulkerson affirmed this only
interrogatively, and looked so anxiously to March
for corroboration that March laughed.

" He dissembled his love, "lie said; but afterward

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 297

in describing to his wife his interview with Mr.
Dryfoos he was less amused with this fact.

When she saw that he was a little cast down by
it, she began to encourage him. "He's just a
common, ignorant man, and probably didn't know
how to express himself. You may be perfectly sure
that he 's delighted with the success of the magazine,
and that he understands as well as you do that he
owes it all to you."

" Ah, I 'm not so sure. I don't believe a man 's
any better for having made money so easily and
rapidly as Dryfoos has done, and I doubt if he 's any
wiser. I don't know just the point he 's reached in
his evolution from grub to beetle, but I do know
that so far as it's gone the process must have in-
volved a bewildering change of ideals and criterions.
I guess he 's come to despise a great many things
that he once respected, and that intellectual ability
is among them — what we call intellectual ability.
He must have undergone a moral deterioration, an
atrophy of the generous instincts, and I don't see
why it shouldn't have reached his mental make-up.
He has sharpened, but he has narrowed ; his sagacity
has turned into suspicion, his caution to meanness,
his courage to ferocity. That 's the way I philoso-
phise a man of Dryfoos's experience, and I am not
very proud when I realise that such a man and his
experience are the ideal and ambition of most Ameri-
cans. I rather think they came pretty near being
mine, once."

" No, dear, they never did," his wife protested.
13*

298 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

"Well, they're not likely to be, in the future.
The Dryfoos feature of Every Other Week is thoroughly
distasteful to me."

"Why, but he hasn't really got anything to do
with it, has he, beyond furnishing the money 1 "

"That's the impression that Fulkerson has
allowed us to get But the man that holds the purse
holds the reins. He may let us guide the horse, but
when he likes he can drive. If we don't like his
driving, then we can get down."

Mrs. March was less interested in this figure of
speech than in the personal aspects involved. " Then
you think Mr. Fulkerson has deceived you ? "

" Oh no ! " said her husband, laughing. " But I
think he has deceived himself, perhaps."

"How 1 " she pursued.

"He may have thought he was using Dryfoos,
when Dryfoos was using him, and he may have
supposed he was not afraid of him when he was
very much so. His courage hadn't been put to
the test, and courage is a matter of proof, like pro-
ficiency on the fiddle, you know : you can't tell
whether youVe got it till you try."

" Nonsense ! Do you mean that he would ever
sacrifice you to Mr. Dryfoos 1 "

" I hope he may not be tempted. But I 'd rather
be taking the chances with Fulkerson alone, than
with Fulkerson and Dryfoos to back him. Dryfoos
seems somehow to take the poetry and the pleasure
out of the thing."

Mrs. March was a long time silent. Then she

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 299

began, "Well, my dear, / never wanted to come to
New York "

" Neither did I," March promptly put in.

"But now that we're here," she went on, "I'm
not going to have you letting every little thing dis-
courage you. I don't see what there was in Mr.
Dryfoos's manner to give you any anxiety. He 's
just a common, stupid, inarticulate country person,
and he didn't know how to express himself, as I said
in the beginning, and that 's the reason he didn't say
anything."

" Well, I don't deny you 're right about it."

" It 's dreadful," His wife continued, " to be mixed
up with such a man and his family, but I don't be-
lieve he '11 ever meddle with your management, and
till he does, all you need do is to have as little to do
with him as possible, and go quietly on your own
way."

" Oh, I shall go on quietly enough," said March.
" I hope I shan't begin going stealthily."

" Well, my dear," said Mrs. March, " just let me
know when you 're tempted to do that. If ever you
sacrifice the smallest grain of your honesty or your
self-respect to Mr. Dryfoos, or anybody else, I will
simply renounce you."

" In view of that I 'm rather glad the management
of Every Other Week involves tastes and not convic-
tions " said March.

III.

THAT night Dryfoos was wakened from his after-
dinner nap by the sound of gay talk and nervous
giggling in the drawing-room. The talk, which was
Christine's, and the giggling, which was Mela's, were
intershot with the heavier tones of a man's voice ;
and Dryfoos lay awhile on the leathern lounge in
his library, trying to make out whether he knew the
voice. His wife sat in a deep chair before the fire,
with her eyes on his face, waiting for him to wake.

" Who is that out there 1 " he asked, without
opening his eyes.

"Indeed, indeed I don't know, Jacob," his wife
answered. " I reckon it 's just some visitor of the
girls."

"Was I snoring?"

"Not a bit. You was sleeping as quiet! I did
hate to have 'em wake you, and I was just goin' out
to shoo them. They've been playin' something,
and that made them laugh."

" I didn't know but I had snored," said the old
man, sitting up.

"No," said his wife. Then she asked wistfully,
" Was you out at the old place, Jacob 1 "

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 301

"Yes."

"Did it look natural?"

" Yes ; mostly. They 're sinking the wells down
in the woods pasture."

" And — the childern's graves 1 "

" They haven't touched that part. But I reckon
we got to have 'em moved to the cemetery. I bought
a lot."

The old woman began softly to weep. " It does
seem too hard that they can't be let to rest in peace,
pore little things. I wanted you and me to lay there
too, when our time come, Jacob. Just there, back
o' the beehives, and under them shoomakes — my, I
can see the very place ! And I don't believe I '11
ever feel at home anywheres else. I woon't know
where I am when the trumpet sounds. I have to
think before I can tell where the east is in New.
York ; and what if I should git faced the wrong
way when I raise ? Jacob, I wonder you could sell
it ! " Her head shook, and the fire-light shone on
her tears, as she searched the folds of her dress for
her pocket.

A peal of laughter came from the drawing-room,
and then the sound of chords struck on the piano.

" Hush ! Don't you cry 'Liz'beth ! " said Dryfoos.
" Here ; take my handkerchief. I 've got a nice lot
in the cemetery, and I 'm goin' to have a monument,
with two lambs on it — like the one you always liked
so much. It ain't the fashion, any more, to have
family buryin'-grounds ; they're collectin' 'em into
the cemeteries, all round."

302 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

" I reckon I got to bear it," said his wife, muffling
her face in his handkerchief. " And I suppose the
Lord kin find me, wherever I am. But I always did
want to lay just there. You mind how we used to
go out and set there, after milkin', and watch the
sun go down, and talk about where their angels was,
and try to figger it out 1 "

" I remember, 'Liz'beth."

The man's voice in the drawing-room sang a snatch
of French song, insolent, mocking, salient ; and then
Christine's attempted the same strain, and another
cry of laughter from Mela followed.

" Well, I always did expect to lay there. But I
reckon it's all right It won't be a great while,
now, any way. Jacob, I don't believe I 'm agoin' to
live very long. I know it don't agree with me
here."

"Oh, I guess it does, 'Liz'beth. You're just a
little pulled down with the weather. It's coming
spring, and you feel it ; but the doctor says you 're
all right I stopped in, on the way up ; and he says
so."

"I reckon he don't know everything," the old
woman persisted. "I've been runnin' down ever
since we left Moffitt, and I didn't feel any too well
there, even. It 's a very strange thing, Jacob, that
the richer you git, the less you ain't able to stay
where you want to, dead or alive."

"It's for the children we do it," said Dryfoos.
" We got to give them their chance in the world."

" Oh, the world ! They ought to bear the yok«

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 303

in their youth, like we done. I know it's what
Coonrod would like to do."

Dryfoos got upon his feet. "If Coonrod '11 mind
his own business, and do what I want him to, he '11
have yoke enough to bear." He moved from his
wife, without further effort to comfort her, and
pottered heavily out into the dining-room. Beyond
its obscurity stretched the glitter of the deep draw-
ing-room. His feet, in their broad, flat slippers,
made no sound on the dense carpet, and he came
unseen upon the little group there near the piano.
Mela perched upon the stool with her back to the
keys, and Beaton bent over Christine, who sat with
a banjo in her lap, letting him take her hands and
put them in the right place on the instrument. Her
face was radiant with happiness, and Mela was
watching her with foolish, unselfish pleasure in her
bliss.

There was nothing wrong in the affair to a man of
Dryfoos's traditions and perceptions, and if it had
been at home in the farm sitting-room, or even in
his parlour at Moffitt, he would not have minded a
young man's placing his daughter's hands on a banjo,
or even holding them there ; it would have seemed
a proper attention from him if he was courting her.
But here, in such a house as this, with the daughter
of a man who had made as much money as he had,
he did not know but it was a liberty. He felt the
angry doubt of it which beset him in regard to so
many experiences of his changed life ; he wanted to
show his sense of it, if it was a liberty, but he did

304 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

not know how, and he did not know that it was so.
Besides, he could not help a touch of the pleasure in
Christine's happiness which Mela showed ; and he
would have gone back to the library, if he could,
without being discovered.

But Beaton had seen him, and Dryfoos, with a
nonchalant nod to the young man, came forward.
" What you got there, Christine 1 "

" A banjo," said the girl, blushing in her father's
presence.

Mela gurgled. " Mr. Beaton is learnun' her the
first position."

Beaton was not embarrassed. He was in evening
dress, and his face, pointed with its brown beard,
showed extremely handsome above the expanse of
his broad white shirt-front. He gave back as non-
chalant a nod as he had got, and without further
greeting to Dryfoos, he said to Christine, "No, no.
You must keep your hand and arm so." He held
them in position. "There ! Now strike with your
right hand. See ? "

"I don't believe I can ever learn," said the girl,
with a fond upward look at him.

" Oh yes, you can," said Beaton.

They both ignored Dryfoos in the little play of
protests which followed, and he said, half jocosely,
half suspiciously, "And is the banjo the fashion,
now ? " He remembered it as the emblem of low-
down show business, and associated it with end-men,
and blackened faces, and grotesque shirt collars.

" It 's all the rage," Mela shouted in answer for alL

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 305

"Everybody plays it. Mr. Beaton borrowed this
from a lady friend of his. "

" Humph ! Pity I got you a piano, then," said Dry-
foos. " A banjo would have been cheaper."

Beaton so far admitted him to the conversation as
to seem reminded of the piano by his mentioning it.
He said to Mela, " Oh, won't you just strike those
chords 1 " and as Mela wheeled about and beat the
keys, he took the banjo from Christine and sat down
with it. " This way ! " He strummed it, and mur-
mured the tune Dryfoos had heard him singing from
the library, while he kept his beautiful eyes floating
on Christine's. "You try that, now; it's very
simple."

" Where is Mrs. Mandel ? " Dryfoos demanded,
trying to assert himself.

Neither of the girls seemed to have heard him
at first in the chatter they broke into over what
Beaton proposed. Then Mela said absently, "Oh,
she had to go out to see one of her friends that 's
sick," and she struck the piano keys. " Come ; try
it, Chris ! "

Dryfoos turned about unheeded, and went back to
the library. He would have liked to put Beaton out
of his house, and in his heart he burned against him
as a contumacious hand ; he would have liked to dis-
charge him from the art department of Every Other
Week at once. But he was aware of not having
treated Beaton with much ceremony, and if the
young man had returned his behaviour in kind, with
an electrical response to his own feeling, had he any

306 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

right to complain 1 After all, there was no harm in
his teaching Christine the banjo.

His wife still sat looking into the fire. " I can't
see," she said, "as we've got a bit more comfort of
our lives, Jacob, because we Ve got such piles and
piles of money. I wisht to gracious we was back on
the farm this minute. I wisht you had held out
ag'inst the childern about sellin' it ; 'twould 'a' bin
the best thing fur 'em, I say. I believe in my soul
they '11 git spoiled here in New York. I kin see a
change in 'em a'ready — in the girls."

Dryfoos stretched himself on the lounge again.
"I can't see as Coonrod is much comfort, either.
Why ain't he here with his sisters ? What does all
that work of his on the East side amount to 1 It
seems as if he done it to cross me, as much as any-
thing." Dryfoos complained to his wife on the basis
of mere affectional habit, which in married life often
survives the sense of intellectual equality. He did
not expect her to reason with him, but there was
help in her listening, and though she could only
soothe his fretfulness with soft answers which were
often wide of the purpose, he still went to her for
solace. " Here, I 've gone into this newspaper busi-
ness, or whatever it is, on his account, and he don't
seem any more satisfied than ever. I can see he
hain't got his heart in it."

" The pore boy tries ; I know he does, Jacob ; and
he wants to please you. But he give up a good deal
when he give up bein' a preacher ; I s'pose we ought
remember that."

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 307

"A preacher!" sneered Dryfoos. "I reckon
bein' a preacher wouldn't satisfy him now. He had
the impudence to tell me this afternoon that he
would like to be a priest ; and he threw it up to me
that he never could be, because I 'd kept him from
studyin'."

"He don't mean a Catholic priest — not a Roman
one, Jacob," the old woman explained wistfully.
" He 's told me all about it. They ain't the kind o'
Catholics we been used to ; some sort of 'Pisco-
palians ; and they do a heap o' good amongst the
poor folks over there. He says we ain't got any
idea how folks lives in them tenement-houses, hun-
derds of 'em in one house, and whole families in a
room ; and it burns in his heart to help 'em like
them Fathers, as he calls 'em, that gives their lives
to it He can't be a Father, he says, because he
can't git the eddication, now; but he can be a
Brother ; and I can't find a word to say ag'inst it,
when it gits to talkin', Jacob."

"I ain't saying anything against his priests,
'Liz'beth," said Dryfoos. " They 're all well enough
in their way ; they Ve given up their lives to it, and
it 's a matter of business with them, like any other.
But what I'm .talking about now is Coonrod. I
don't object to his doin' all the charity he wants to,
and the Lord knows I've never been stingy with
him about it. He might have all the money he
wants, to give round any way he pleases."

" That 's what I told him once, but he says money
ain't the thing — or not the only thing you got to
X

308 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

give to them poor folks. You got to give your time,
and your knowledge, and your love — I don't know
what all — you got to give yourself, if you expect to
help 'em. That 's what Coonrod says."

" "Well, I can tell him that charity begins at home,"
said Dryfoos, sitting up, in his impatience. " And
he 'd better give himself to us a little — to his old
father and mother. And his sisters. What 's he
doin' goin' off there, to his meetings, and I don't
know what all, an' leavin' them here alone ? "

" Why, ain't Mr. Beaton with 'em ? " asked the old
woman. " I thought I beared his voice."

" Mr. Beaton ! Of course, he is ! And who 's Mr.
Beaton, anyway?"

" WThy, ain't he one of the men in Coonrod's
office ? I thought I beared "

" Yes, he is ! But who is he 1 What's he doing
round here ? Is he makin' up to Christine ? "

" I reckon he is. From Mely's talk, she 's about
crazy over the fellow. Don't you like him, Jacob 1 "

" I don't know him, or what he is. He hasn't got
any manners. Who brought him here 1 How 'd he
come to come, in the first place ? "

"Mr Fulkerson brung him, I believe," said the old
woman patiently.

" Fulkerson ! " Dryfoos snorted. " Where 's Mrs.
Mandel, I should like to know ? He brought her,
too. Does she go trapsein' off this way, every even-
ing?"

"No, she seems to be here pretty regular most o'
the time. I don't know how we could ever git along

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 309

without her, Jacob ; she seems to know just what to
do, and the girls would be ten times as outbreakin*
without her. I hope you ain't thinkin' o' turnin' her
off, Jacob 1 "

Dryfoos did not think it necessary to answer such
a question. " It 's all Fulkerson, Fulkerson, Fulker-
son. It seems to me that Fulkerson about runs this
family. He brought Mrs. Mandel, and he brought
that Beaton, and he brought that Boston fellow ! I
guess I give him a dose, though ; and I '11 learn
Fulkerson that he can't have everything his own way.
I don't want anybody to help me spend my money.
I made it, and I can manage it. I guess Mr. Fulker-
son can bear a little watching, now. He 's been
travelling pretty free, and he 's got the notion he 's
driving, may be. I 'm agoing to look after that book
a little myself."

" You '11 kill yourself, Jacob," said his wife, " tryin'
to do so many things. And what is it all fur 1 I
don't see as we 're better off, any, for all the money.
It 's just as much care as it used to be when we was
all there on the farm together. I wisht we could go
back, Ja "

" We can't go back ! " shouted the old man fiercely.
" There 's no farm any more to go back to. The
fields is full of gas wells and oil wells and hell holes
generally ; the house is tore down, and the barn 's
goin' "

" The barn ! " gasped the old woman. " Oh, my ! "

" If I was to give all I 'm worth this minute, we
couldn't go back to the farm, any more than them

310 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

girls in there could go back and be little children. I
don't say we 're any better off, for the money. I Ve
got more of it now than I ever had ; and there 's no
end to the luck ; it pours in. But I feel like I was
tied hand and foot. I don't know which way to
move ; I don't know what 's best to do about any-
thing. The money don't seem to buy anything but
more and more care and trouble. We got a big
house that we ain't at home in ; and we got a lot of
hired girls round under our feet that hinder and don't
help. Our children don't mind us, and we got no
friends or neighbours. But it had to be. I couldn't
help but sell the farm, and we can't go back to it,
for it ain't there. So don't you say anything more
about it, 'Liz'beth."

" Pore Jacob ! " said his wife. " Well, I woon't,
dear."

IV.

IT was clear to Beaton that Dryfoos distrusted him;
and the fact heightened his pleasure in Christine's
liking for him. He was as sure of this as he was of
the other, though he was not so sure of any reason
for his pleasure in it. She had her charm ; the charm
of wildness to which a certain wildness in himself
responded ; and there were times when his fancy
contrived a common future for them, which would
have a prosperity forced from the old fellow's love of
the girl. Beaton liked the idea of this compulsion
better than he liked the idea of the money ; there
was something a little repulsive in that ; he imagined
himself rejecting it ; he almost wished he was
enough in love with the girl to marry her without
it ; that would be fine. He was taken with her in a
certain measure, in a certain way ; the question was
in what measure, in Avhat way.

It was partly to escape from this question that he
hurried down town, and decided to spend with the
Leightons the hour remaining on his hands before it
was time to go to the reception for which he was
dressed. It seemed to him important that he should
see Alma Leighton. After all, it was her charm that

312 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

was most abiding with him; perhaps it was to be
final. He found himself very happy in his present
relations with her. She had dropped that barrier of
pretences and ironical surprise. It seemed to him
that they had gone back to the old ground of com-
mon artistic interest which he had found so pleasant
the summer before. Apparently she and her mother
had both forgiven his neglect of them in the first
months of their stay in New York ; he was sure that
Mrs. Leighton liked him as well as ever, and if there
was still something a little provisional in Alma's
manner at times, it was something that piqued more
than it discouraged; it made him curious, not
anxious.

He found the young ladies with Fulkerson when
he rang. He seemed to be amusing them both, and
they were both amused beyond the merit of so small
a pleasantry, Beaton thought, when Fulkerson said,
" Introduce myself, Mr. Beaton : Mr. Fulkerson of
Every Other Week. Think I've met you at our
place." The girls laughed, and Alma explained that
her mother was not very well, and would be sorry
not to see him. Then she turned, as he felt, per-
versely, and went on talking with Fulkerson and left
him to Miss Woodburn.

She finally recognised his disappointment: "Ah
don't often get a chance at you, Mr. Beaton, and
Ah 'm just goin' to toak yo' to death. Yo' have been
Soath yo'self, and yo' know ho' we do toak."

" I 've survived to say yes," Beaton admitted.

"Oh, now, do you think we toak so much mo'

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 313

than you do in the No'th ? " the young lady depre-
cated.

" I don't know. I only know you can't talk too
much for me. I should like to hear you say Soath
and hoase and aboat for the rest of my life."

" That 's what Ah call raght personal, Mr. Beaton.
Now Ah 'm goin' to be personal, too." Miss Wood-
burn flung out over her lap the square of cloth
she was embroidering, and asked him, "Don't you
think that 's beautiful 1 Now, as an awtust — a great
awtust 1 "

" As a great awtust, yes," said Beaton, mimicking
her accent. " If I were less than great I might have
something to say about the arrangement of colours.
You 're as bold and original as Nature."

"Really 1 Oh, now, do tell me yo' favo'ite colo',
Mr. Beaton."

"My favourite colour? Bless my soul, why
should I prefer any ? Is blue good, or red wicked ?
Do people have favourite colours ? " Beaton found
himself suddenly interested.

" Of co'se they do," answered the girl. " Don't
awtusts 1 "
, " I never heard of one that had — consciously."

" Is it possible 1 I supposed they all had. Now
mah favo'ite colo' is gawnet. Don't you think it 's a
pretty colo' ? "

" It depends upon how it 's used. Do you mean
in neckties 1 " Beaton stole a glance at the one
Fulkerson was wearing.

Miss Woodburn laughed with her face bowed upon
VOL. I— 14

314 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

her wrist. " Ah do think you gentlemen in the
Xo'th awe ten tahms as lahvely as the ladies."

" Strange," said Beaton. "In the South — Soath,
excuse me ! — I made the observation that the ladie&
were ten times as lively as the gentlemen. What is
that you 're working 1 "

" This ? " Miss "\Voodburn gave it another flirt,
and looked at it with a glance of dawning recogni-
tion. " Oh, this is a table-covah. Wouldn't you
lahke to see where it 's to go 1 "

" Why, certainly."

" Well, if you '11 be raght good I 'U let yo' give me
some professional advass about putting something in
the co'ners or not, when you have seen it on the
table."

She rose and led the way into the other room.
Beaton knew she wanted to talk with him about
something else ; but he waited patiently to let her
play her comedy out. She spread the cover on the
table, and he advised her, as he saw she wished,,
against putting anything in the corners ; just run a
line of her stitch around the edge, he said.

"Mr. Fulkerson and Ah, why, we 've been having
a regular faght aboat it," she commented. " But we
both agreed, fahnally, to leave it to you ; Mr. Ful-
kerson said you 'd be sure to be raght. Ah 'm so glad
you took mah sahde. But he 's a great admahrer of
yours, Mr. Beaton," she concluded demurely, sug-
gestively.

" Is he 1 Well, I 'm a great admirer of Fulker-
son's," said Beaton, with a capricious willingness to

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 315

humour her wish to talk about Fulkerson. " He 's a
capital fellow; generous, magnanimous, with quite
an ideal of friendship, and an eye single to the main
chance all the time. He would advei'tise Every
Other Week on his family vault."

Miss Woodburn laughed, and said she should tell
him what Beaton had said.

" Do. But he 's used to defamation from me, and
he '11 think you 're joking."

"Ah suppose," said Miss Woodburn, "that he's
quahte the tahpe of a New York business man." She
added, as if it followed logically, "He's so different
from what I thought a New York business man
would be."

" It 's your Virginia tradition to despise business,"
said Beaton rudely.

Miss Woodburn laughed again. " Despahse it ?
Mah goodness ! we want to get into it, and ' woak it
fo' all it's wo'th,' as Mr. Fulkerson says. That
tradition is all past. You don't know what the
Soath is now. Ah suppose mah fathaw despahses
business, but he 's a tradition himself, as Ah
tell him." Beaton would have enjoyed joining the
young lady in anything she might be going to say in
derogation of her father, but he restrained himself,
and she went on more and more as if she wished to
account for her father's habitual hauteur with
Beaton, if not to excuse it. " Ah tell him he don't
iinderstand the rising generation. He was brought
up in the old school, and he thinks we Jre all just
lahke he was when he was young, with all those

316 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

ahdeals of chivalry and family ; but mah goodness !
it 's money that cyoants no'adays in the Soath, just
lahke it does everywhere else. Ah suppose, if we
could have slavery back in the fawm mah fathaw
thinks it could have been brought up to, when the
commercial spirit wouldn't let it alone, it would be
the best thing ; but we can't have it back, and Ah
tell him we had better have the commercial spirit, as
the next best thing."

Miss Woodburn went on, with sufficient loyalty
and piety, to expose the difference of her own and
her father's ideals, but with what Beaton thought
less reference to his own unsympathetic attention than
to a knowledge finally of the personnel and materiel
of Every Other Week, and Mr. Fulkerson's relation to
the enterprise. "You most excuse my asking so
many questions, Mr. Beaton. You know it's all
mah doing that we awe heah in New York. Ah
just told mah fathaw that if he was evah goin' to do
anything with his wrahtings, he had got to come
No'th, and Ah made him come. Ah believe he 'd
have stayed in the Soath all his lahfe. And now
Mr. Fulkerson wants him to let his editor see some
of his wrahtings, and Ah wanted to know something
aboat the magazine. We awe a great deal excited
aboat it in this hoase, you know, Mr. Beaton," she
concluded, with a look that now transferred the
Interest from Fulkerson to Alma. She led the way
back to the room where they were sitting, and went
up to triumph over Fulkerson with Beaton's decision
about the table-cover.

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 317

Alma was left with Beaton near the piano, and he
began to talk about the Dryfooses, as he sat down
on the piano stool. He said he had been giving
Miss Dryfoos a lesson on the banjo ; he had borrowed
the banjo of Miss Vance. Then he struck the chord
he had been trying to teach Christine, and played
over the air he had sung.

" How do you like that ? " he asked, whirling
round.

" It seems rather a disrespectful little tune, some-
how," said Alma placidly.

Beaton rested his elbow on the corner of the piano,
and gazed dreamily at her. " Your perceptions are
wonderful. It is disrespectful. I played it, up
there, because I felt disrespectful to them."

" Do you claim that as a merit ? "

" No, I state it as a fact. How can you respect
such people ?"

"You might respect yourself, then," said the girl.
" Or perhaps that wouldn't be so easy, either."

" No, it wouldn't. I like to have you say these
things to me," said Beaton impartially,

" Well, I like to say them," Alma returned.

" They do me good."

" Oh, I don't know that that was my motive."

"There is no one like you — no one," said Beaton,
as if apostrophising her in her absence. " To come
from that house, with its assertions of money — you
can hear it chink ; you can smell the foul old bank-
notes ; it stifles you — into an atmosphere like this,
is like coming into another world."

318 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

"Thank you," said Alma. "I'm glad there isn't
that unpleasant odour here ; but I wish there was a
little more of the chinking."

" No, no ! Don't say that ! " he implored. " I
like to think that there is one soul uncontaminated
by the sense of money in this big, brutal, sordid city."

"You mean two," said Alma, with modesty. "But
if you stifle at the Dryfooses', why do you go there ?"

" Why do I go 1 " he mused. " Don't you believe
in knowing all the natures, the types, you can ?
Those girls are a strange study : the young one is a
simple, earthly creature, as common as an oat-field ;
and the other a sort of sylvan life : fierce, flashing,
feline-
Alma burst out into a laugh. " What apt allitera-
tion ! And do they like being studied ? I should
think the sylvan life might — scratch."

" No," said Beaton, with melancholy absence, " it
only — purrs."

The girl felt a rising indignation. "Well, then,
Mr. Beaton; I should hope it would scratch, and
bite, too. I think you've no business to go about
studying people, as you do. It 's abominable."

" Go on," said the young man. "That Puritan con-
science of yours ! It appeals to the old Covenanter
strain in me — likeavoice of pre-existence. Go on '

" Oh, if I went on I should merely say it was not
only abominable, but contemptible."

"You could be my guardian angel, Alma," said
the young man, making his eyes more and more
slumbrous and dreamy.

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 319

" Stuff ! I hope I have a soul above buttons ! "

He smiled, as she rose, and followed her across the
room. " Good night, Mr. Beaton," she said.

Miss Woodburn and Fulkerson came in from the
other room. " What ! You 're not going, Beaton 1 "

" Yes ; I 'm going to a reception. I stopped in on
my way."

" To kill time," Alma explained.

"Well," said Fulkerson gallantly, "this is the
last place I should like to do it. But I guess I'd
better be going too. It has sometimes occurred to
me that there is such a thing as staying too late.
But with Brother Beaton, here, just starting in for
an evening's amusement, it does seem a little early
yet. Can't you urge me to stay, somebody 1 "

The two girls laughed, and Miss Woodburn said,
" Mr. Beaton is such a butterfly of fashion ! Ah
wish Ah was on mah way to a pawty. Ah feel
quahte envious."

"But he didn't say it to make you," Alma ex-
plained with meek softness.

"Well, we can't all be swells. Where is your
party, anyway, Beaton 1 " asked Fulkerson. " How
do you manage to get your invitations to those
things ? I suppose a fellow has to keep hinting
round pretty lively, heigh ? "

Beaton took these mockeries serenely, and shook
hands with Miss Woodburn, with the effect of
having already shaken hands with Alma, She stood
with hers clasped behind her.

V.

BEATON went away with the smile on his face
which he had kept in listening to Fulkerson, and
carried it with him to the reception. He believed
that Alma was vexed with him for more personal
reasons than she had implied ; it flattered him that
she should have resented what he told her of the
Dryfooses. She had scolded him in their behalf
apparently; but really because he had made her
jealous by his interest, of whatever kind, in some
one else. What followed, had followed naturally.
Unless she had been quite a simpleton she could not
have met his provisional love-making on any other
terms; and the reason why Beaton chiefly liked
Alma Leighton was that she was not a simpleton.
Even up in the country, when she was overawed by
his acquaintance, at first, she was not very deeply
overawed, and at times she was not overawed at alL
At such times she astonished him by taking his most
solemn histrionics with flippant incredulity, and even
burlesquing them. But he could see, all the same,
that he had caught her fancy, and he admired the
skill with which she punished his neglect when they
met in New York. He had really come very near

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 321

forgetting the Leightons ; the intangible obligations
of mutual kindness which hold some men so fast,
hung loosely upon him ; it would not have hurt him
to break from them altogether ; but when he recog-
nised them at last, he found that it strengthened
them indefinitely to have Alma ignore them so com-
pletely. If she had been sentimental, or softly
reproachful, that would have been the end ; he could
not have stood it ; he would have had to drop her.
But when she met him on his own ground, and
obliged him to be sentimental, the game was in her
hands. Beaton laughed, now, when he thought of
that, and he said to himself that the girl had grown
immensely since she had come to New York ; nothing
seemed to have been lost upon her ; she must have
kept her eyes uncommonly wide open. He noticed
that especially in their talks over her work ; she had
profited by everything she had seen and heard ; she
had all of Wetmore's ideas pat ; it amused Beaton
to see how she seized every useful word that he
dropped, too, and turned him to technical account
whenever she could. He liked that ; she had a great
deal of talent ; there was no question of that ; if she
were a man there could be no question of her future.
He began to construct a future for her ; it included
provision for himself too ; it was a common future,
in which their lives and work were united.

He was full of the glow of its prosperity when he
met Margaret Vance at the reception.

The house was one where people might chat a
long time together without publicly committing
14*

322 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

themselves to an interest in each other except such
as grew out of each other's ideas. Miss Vance was
there because she united in her catholic sympathies
or ambitions the objects of the fashionable people
and of the aesthetic people who met there on common
ground. It was almost the only house in New York
where this happened often, and it did not happen
very often there. It was a literary house, primarily,
with artistic qualifications, and the frequenters of it
were mostly authors and artists ; Wetmore, who
was always trying to fit everything with a phrase,
said it was the unfrequenters who were fashionable.
There was great ease there, and simplicity ; and if
there was not distinction, it was not for want of
distinguished people, but because there seems to be
some solvent in New York life that reduces all men
to a common level, that touches everybody with its
potent magic and brings to the surface the deeply
underlying nobody. The effect for some tempera-
ments, for consciousness, for egotism, is admirable ;
for curiosity, for hero-worship, it is rather baffling.
It is the spirit of the street transferred to the draw-
ing-room ; indiscriminating, levelling, but doubtless
finally wholesome, and witnessing the immensity
of the place, if not consenting to the grandeur of
reputations or presences.

Beaton now denied that this house represented a
salon at all, in the old sense ; and he held that the
salon was impossible, even undesirable, with us,
when Miss Vance sighed for it. At any rate, he
said that this turmoil of coming and going, this

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 323

bubble and babble, this cackling and hissing of con-
versation was not the expression of any such civilisa-
tion as had created the salon. Here, he owned, were
the elements of intellectual delightfulness, but he
said their assemblage in such quantity alone denied
the salon; there was too much of a good thing.
The French word implied a long evening of general
talk among the guests, crowned with a little chicken
at supper, ending at cock-crow. Here was tea, with
milk or with lemon — baths of it — and claret cup for
the hardier spirits throughout the evening. It was
very nice, very pleasant, but it was not the little
chicken — not the salon. In fact, he affirmed, the
salon descended from above, out of the great world,
and included the aesthetic world in it. But our
great world — the rich people, were stupid, with no
wish to be otherwise; they were not even curious
about authors and artists. Beaton fancied himself
speaking impartially, and so he allowed himself to
speak bitterly ; he said that in no other city in the
world, except Vienna, perhaps, were such people so
little a part of society.

" It isn't altogether the rich people's fault," said
Margaret ; and she spoke impartially, too. " I
don't believe that the literary men and the artists
would like a salon that descended to them. Madame
Geoffrin, you know, was very plebeian ; her husband
was a business man of some sort."

"He would have been a howling swell in New
York," said Beaton, still impartially.

Wetmore came up to their corner, with a scroll
Y

324 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

of bread and butter in one hand and a cup of tea in
the other. Large and fat, and clean shaven, he
looked like a monk in evening dress.

" We were talking about salons," said Margaret.

" Why don't you open a saloon yourself 1 " asked
Wetmore, breathing thickly from the anxiety of
getting through the crowd without spilling his tea.

" Like poor Lady Barberina Lemon 1 " said the
girl, with a laugh. " What a good story ! That
idea of a woman who couldn't be interested in any
of the arts because she was socially and traditionally
the material of them ! We can never reach that
height of nonchalance in this country."

" Not if we tried seriously 1 " suggested the painter.
*' I 've an idea that if the Americans ever gave their
minds to that sort of thing, they could take the
palm — or the cake, as Beaton here would say — just
as they do in everything else. When we do have
an aristocracy, it will be an .aristocracy that will go
ahead of anything the world has ever seen. Why
don't somebody make a beginning, and go in openly
for an ancestry, and a lower middle class, and an
hereditary legislature, and all the rest ? We Ve got
liveries, and crests, and palaces, and caste feeling.
We 're all right as far as we Ve gone, and we Ve got
the money to go any length."

" Like your natural-gas man, Mr. Beaton," said the
girl, with a smiling glance round at him.

" Ah ! " said Wetmore, stirring his tea, " has
Beaton got a natural-gas man 1 "

"My natural-gas man," said Beaton, ignoring

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 325

Wetmore's question, " doesn't know how to live in,
his palace yet, and I doubt if he has any caste feeling.
I fancy his family believe themselves victims of it.
They say — one of the young ladies does — that she
never saw such an unsociable place as New York ;
nobody calls."

" That 's good ! " said Wetmore. " I suppose
they 're all ready for company too : good cook, furni-
ture, servants, carriages 1 "

" Galore," said Beaton.

" Well, that 's too bad. There 's a chance for you,
Miss Vance. Doesn't your philanthropy embrace the
socially destitute as well as the financially ? Just
think of a family like that, without a friend, in a
great city ! I should think common charity had a
duty there — not to mention the uncommon."

He distinguished that kind as Margaret's by a
glance of ironical deference. She had a repute for
good works which was out of proportion io the
works, as it always is, but she was really active in
that way, under the vague obligation, which we now
all feel, to be helpful. She was of the church which
seems to have found a reversion to the imposing
ritual of the past the way back to the early ideals of
Christian brotherhood.

"Oh, they seem to have Mr. Beaton," Margaret
answered, and Beaton felt obscurely nattered by her
reference to his patronage of the Dryfooses.

He explained to Wetmore, " They have me because
they partly own me. Dryf oos is Fulkerson's financial
backer in Every Other Week."

326 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

" Is that so ? "Well, that 's interesting too. Aren't
you rather astonished, Miss Vance, to see what a
pretty thing Beaton is making of that magazine of
his?"

" Oh," said Margaret, " it 's so very nice, every
•way ; it makes you feel as if you did have a country,
after all. It 's as chic — that detestable little word ! —
as those new French books."

" Beaton modelled it on them. But you mustn't
suppose he does everything about Every Other Week ;
he 'd like you to. Beaton, you haven't come up to
that cover of your first number, since. That was the
design of one of my pupils, Miss Vance — a little girl
that Beaton discovered down in New Hampshire last
summer."

" Oh yes. And have you great hopes of her, Mr.
Wetmore 1 "

" She seems to have more love of it and knack for
it than any one of her sex I Ve seen yet. It really
looks like a case of art for art's sake, at times. But
you can't tell. They 're liable to get married at any
moment, you know. Look here, Beaton, when your
natural-gas man gets to the picture-buying stage in
his development, just remember your old friends,
will you 1 You know, Miss Vance, those new fellows
have their regular stages. They never know what
to do with their money, but they find out that
people buy pictures, at one point. They shut your
things up in their houses where nobody comes ; and
after a while they overeat themselves — they don't
know what else to do — and die of apoplexy, and

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 327

leave your pictures to a gallery, and then they see
the light. It 's slow, but it 's pretty sure. Well, I
see Beaton isn't going to move on, as he ought to do ;
and so I must. He always ^t•as an unconventional
creature."

Wetmore went away, but Beaton remained, and
he outstayed several other people who came up to
speak to Miss Vance. She was interested in every-
body, and she liked the talk of these clever literary,
artistic, clerical, even theatrical people, and she liked
the sort of court with which they recognised her
fashion as well as her cleverness ; it was very
pleasant to be treated intellectually as if she were
one of themselves, and socially as if she was not
habitually the same, but a sort of guest in Bohemia,
a distinguished stranger. If it was Arcadia rather
than Bohemia, still she felt her quality of distin-
guished stranger. The flattery of it touched her
fancy, and not her vanity ; she had very little vanity.
Beaton's devotion made the same sort of appeal ; it
was not so much that she liked him as she liked
being the object of his admiration. She was a girl
of genuine sympathies, intellectual rather than
sentimental. In fact she was an intellectual person,
whom qualities of the heart saved from being dis-
agreeable, as they saved her on the other hand from
being worldly or cruel in her fashionableness. She
had read a great many books, and had ideas about
them, quite courageous and original ideas ; she knew
about pictures — she had been in Wetmore 's class;
she was fond of music; she was willing to under-

328 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

stand even politics ; in Boston she might have been
agnostic, but in New York she was sincerely religious;
she was very accomplished, and perhaps it was her
goodness that prevented her feeling what was not
best in Beaton.

" Do you think," she said, after the retreat of one
of the comers and goers left her alone with him
again, " that those young ladies would like me to
call on them 1 "

" Those young ladies ? " Beaton echoed. " Miss
Leigh ton and "

t{ No ; I have been there with my aunt's cards
already."

"Oh yes," said Beaton, as if he had known of it;
he admired the pluck and pride with which Alma
had refrained from ever mentioning the fact to him,
and had kept her mother from mentioning it, which
must have been difficult.

" I mean the Miss Dryfooses. It seems really
barbarous, if nobody goes near them. We do all
kinds of things, and help all kinds of people in some
ways, but we let strangers remain strangers unless
they know how to make their way among us."

" The Dryfooses certainly wouldn't know how to
make their way among you," said Beaton, with a
sort of dreamy absence in his tone.

Miss Vance went on, speaking out the process of
reasoning in her mind, rather than any conclusions
she had reached. "We defend ourselves by trying
to believe that they must have friends of their own,
or that they would think us patronising, and

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 329

wouldn't like being made the objects of social
charity ; but they needn't really suppose anything of
the kind."

"I don't imagine they would," said Beaton. "I
think they 'd be only too happy to have you come.
But you wouldn't know what to do with each other,
indeed, Miss Vance."

" Perhaps we shall like each other," said the girl
"bravely, " and then we shall know. What church
are they of ? "

" I don't believe they 're of any," said Beaton.
u The mother was brought up a Dunkard."

" A Dunkard ? "

Beaton told what he knew of the primitive sect,
with its early Christian polity, its literal interpretation
of Christ's ethics, and its quaint ceremonial of foot-
washing; he made something picturesque of that.
"The father is a Mammon-worshipper, pure and
simple. I suppose the young ladies go to church,
but I don't know where. They haven't tried to con-
vert me."

" I '11 tell them not to despair — after I 've con-
verted them" said Miss Vance. "Will you let me
use you as a point d'appui, Mr. Beaton ? "

" Any way you like. If you 're really going to see
them, perhaps I 'd better make a confession. I left
your banjo with them, after I got it put in order."

" How very nice ! Then we have a common in-
terest already."

"Do you mean the banjo, or 1 "

" The banjo, decidedly. Which of them plays 1 "

330 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

" Neither. But the eldest heard that the banjo
was ' all the rage,' as the youngest says. Perhaps you
can persuade them that good works are the rage too."

Beaton had no very lively belief that Margaret
would go to see the Dryfooses ; he did so few of the
things he proposed that he went upon the theory
that others must be as faithless. Still, he had a cruel
amusement in figuring the possible encounter between
Margaret Vance, with her intellectual elegance, her
eager sympathies and generous ideals, and those
girls with their rude past, their false and distorted
perspective, their sordid and hungry selfishness, and
their faith in the omnipotence of their father's
wealth wounded by their experience of its present
social impotence. At the bottom of his heart he
sympathised with them rather than with her ; he
was more like them.

People had ceased coming, and some of them were
going. Miss Vance said she must go too, and she
was about to rise, when the host came up with
March ; Beaton turned away.

" Miss Vance, I want to introduce Mr. March, the
editor of Every Other Week. You oughtn't to be
restricted to the art department. We literary fellows
think that arm of the service gets too much of the
glory nowadays." His banter was for Beaton, but
he was already beyond ear-shot, and the host went
on : " Mr. March can talk with you about your
favourite Boston. He 's just turned his back on it."

"Oh, I hope not!" said Miss Vance. "I can't
imagine anybody voluntarily leaving Boston."

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 331

"I don't say he's so bad as that," said the host,
committing March to her. " He came to New York
because he couldn't help it — like the rest of us. I
never know whether that's a compliment to New
York or not."

They talked Boston a little while, without finding
that they had common acquaintance there ; Miss
Vance must have concluded that society was much
larger in Boston than she had supposed from her
visits there, or else that March did not know many
people in it. But she was not a girl to care much
for the inferences that might be drawn from such
conclusions ; she rather prided herself upon despising
them ; and she gave herself to the pleasure of being
talked to as if she were of March's own age. In the
glow of her sympathetic beauty and elegance he
talked his best, and tried to amuse her with his jokes,
which he had 'the art of tingeing with a little serious-
ness on one side. He made her laugh; and he flat-
tered her by making her think ; in her turn she
charmed him so much by enjoying what he said that
he began to brag of his wife, as a good husband
always does when another woman charms him ; and
she asked, Oh, was Mrs. March there ; and would he
introduce her ?

She asked Mrs. March for her address, and
whether she had a day; and she said she would
come to see her, if she would let her. Mrs. March
could not be so enthusiastic about her as March
was, but as they walked home together they talked
the girl over, and agreed about her beauty and

332 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

her amiability. Mrs. March said she seemed very
unspoiled for a person who must have been so much
spoiled. They tried to analyse her charm, and they
succeeded in formulating it as a combination of
intellectual fashionableness and worldly innocence.
" I think," said Mrs. March, " that city girls, brought
up as she must have been, are often the most
innocent of all. They never imagine the wickedness
of the world, and if they marry happily they go
through life as innocent as children. Everything
combines to keep them so ; the very hollowness of
society shields them. They are the loveliest of the
human race. But perhaps the rest have to pay too
much for them."

" For such an exquisite creature as Miss Vance,"
said March, "we couldn't pay too much."

A wild laughing cry suddenly broke upon the air
at the street- crossing in front of them. A girl's
voice called out, " Run, run, Jen ! The copper is
after you." A woman's figure rushed stumbling
across the way and into the shadow of the houses,
pursued by a burly policeman.

" Ah, but if that 's part of the price ? "

They went along fallen from the gay spirit of their
talk into a silence which he broke with a sigh.
" Can that poor wretch and the radiant girl we left
yonder really belong to the same system of things ?
How impossible each makes the other seem ! "

END OF VOL. I.

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES

VOL. IL

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

PART THIRD.

VI.

MRS. HORN believed in the world and in society
and its unwritten constitution devoutly, and she
tolerated her niece's benevolent activities as she toler-
ated her aesthetic sympathies because these things,
however oddly, were tolerated — even encouraged by
society; and they gave Margaret a charm. They
made her originality interesting. Mrs. Horn did
not intend that they should ever go so far as to
make her troublesome ; and it was with a sense of
this abeyant authority of her aunt's that the girl
asked her approval of her proposed call upon the
Dryfooses. She explained as well as she could the
social destitution of these opulent people, and she
had of course to name Beaton as the source of her
knowledge concerning them.

"Did Mr. Beaton suggest your calling on them ?"

" No ; he rather discouraged it."

" And why do you think you ought to go in this
VOL. II.— 1

2 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

particular instance ? New York is full of people
who don't know anybody."

Margaret laughed. " I suppose it 's like any
other charity : you reach the cases you know of.
The others you say you can't help, and you try to
ignore them."

" It 's very romantic," said Mrs. Horn. " I hope
you've counted the cost; all the possible conse-
quences."

Margaret knew that her aunt had in mind their
common experience with the Leightons, whom, to
give their common conscience peace, she had called
upon with her aunt's cards and excuses, and an
invitation for her Thursdays, somewhat too late to
make the visit seem a welcome to New York. She
was so coldly received, not so much for herself as in
her quality of envoy, that her aunt experienced all
the comfort which vicarious penance brings. She
did not perhaps consider sufficiently her niece's
guiltlessness in the expiation. Margaret was not
with her at St. Barnaby in the fatal fortnight she
passed there, and never saw the Leightons till she
went to call upon them. She never complained :
the strain of asceticism, which mysteriously exists in
us all, and makes us put peas, boiled or unboiled, in
our shoes, gave her patience with the snub which
the Leightons presented her for her aunt. But now
she said with this in mind, " Nothing seems simpler
than to get rid of people if you don't want them.
You merely have to let them alone."

'It isn't so pleasant, letting them alone," said
Mrs. Horn.

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 6

" Or having them let you alone," said Margaret ;
for neither Mrs. Leighton nor Alma had ever come
to enjoy the belated hospitality of Mrs. Horn's
Thursdays.

"Yes, or having them let you alone," Mrs. Horn
courageously consented. "And all that I ask you,
Margaret, is to be sure that you really want to know
these people."

" I don't," said the girl seriously, " in the usual
way."

"Then the question is whether you do in the
unusual way. They will build a great deal upon
you," said Mrs. Horn, realising how much the
Leightons must have built upon her, and how much
out of proportion to her desert they must now dis-
like her ; for she seemed to have had them on her
mind from the time they came, and had always
meant to recognise any reasonable claim they had
upon her.

" It seems very odd, very sad," Margaret returned,
" that you never can act unselfishly in society affairs.
If I wished to go and see those girls just to do them
a pleasure, and perhaps because if they 're strange
and lonely, I might do them good, even — it would
be impossible."

" Quite," said her aunt. " Such a thing would be
Quixotic. Society doesn't rest upon any such basis.
It can't ; it would go to pieces, if people acted from
unselfish motives."

" Then it 's a painted savage ! " said the girl.
" All its favours are really bargains. Its gifts are
for gifts back again."

4 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

"Yes, that is true," said Mrs. Horn, with no
more sense of wrong in the fact than the political
economist has in the fact that wages are the measure
of necessity and not of merit. ' You get what you
pay for. It's a matter of business." She satisfied
herself with this formula, which she did not invent,
as fully as if it were a reason ; but she did not dis-
like her niece's revolt against it. That was part of
Margaret's originality, which pleased her aunt in pro-
portion to her own conventionality ; she was really
a timid person, and she liked the show of courage
which Margaret's magnanimity often reflected upon
her. She had through her a repute, with people who
did not know her well, for intellectual and moral
qualities ; she was supposed to be literary and charit-
able ; she almost had opinions and ideals, but really
fell short of their possession. She thought that she
set bounds to the girl's originality because she recog-
nised them. Margaret understood this better than
her aunt, and knew that she had consulted her
about going to see the Dryfooses out of deference,
and with no expectation of luminous instruction.
She was used to being a law to herself, but she knew
what she might and might not do, so that she was
rather a by-law. She was the kind of girl that might
have fancies for artists and poets, but might end by
marrying a prosperous broker, and leavening a vast
lump of moneyed and fashionable life with her cul-
ture, generosity, and good-will. The intellectual
interests were first with her, but she might be equal
to sacrificing them ; she had the best heart, but she

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 5

might know how to harden it ; if she was eccentric,
her social orbit was defined ; comets themselves
traverse space on fixed lines. She was like every
one else, a congei'ies of contradictions and inconsist-
encies, but obedient to the general expectation of
what a girl of her position must and must not finally
be. Provisionally, she was very much what she
liked to be.

Z

VII.

MARGARET VANCE tried to give herself some reason
for going to call upon the Dryfooses, but she could
find none better than the wish to do a kind thing.
This seemed queerer and less and less sufficient as she
examined it, and she even admitted a little curiosity
as a harmless element in her motive, without being
very well satisfied with it. She tried to add a slight
sense of social duty, and then she decided to have
no motive at all, but simply to pay her visit as she
would to any other eligible strangers she saw fit to
call upon. She perceived that she must be very
careful not to let them see that any other impulse
had governed her ; she determined, if possible, to let
them patronise her ; to be very modest and sincere
and diffident, and, above all, not to play a part.
This was easy, compared with the choice of a man-
ner that should convey to them the fact that she
was not playing a part. When the hesitating Irish
serving-man had acknowledged that the ladies were
at home, and had taken her card to them, she sat
waiting for them in the drawing-room. Her study
of its appointments, with their impersonal costliness,
gave her no suggestion how to proceed; the two

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. T

sisters were upon her before she had really decided,
and she rose to meet them with the conviction that
she was going to play a part for want of some chosen
means of not doing so. She found herself, before
she knew it, making her banjo a property in the
little comedy, and professing so much pleasure in the
fact that Miss Dryfoos was taking it up ; she had
herself been so much interested by it. Anything,
she said, was a relief from the piano ; and then,
between the guitar and the banjo, one must really
choose the banjo, unless one wanted to devote one's
whole natural life to the violin. Of course, there
was the mandolin ; but Margaret asked if they did
not feel that the bit of shell you struck it with inter-
posed a distance between you and the real soul of
the instrument ; and then it did have such a faint,
mosquitoy little tone ! She made much of the ques-
tion, which they left her to debate alone while they
gazed solemnly at her till she characterised the tone
of the mandolin, when Mela broke into a large,
coarse laugh.

"Well, that's just what it does sound like," she
explained defiantly to her sister. "I always feel
like it was going to settle somewhere, and I want to
hit myself a slap before it begins to bite. I don't
see what ever brought such a thing into fashion."

Margaret had not expected to be so powerfully
seconded, and she asked, after gathering herself to-
gether, " And you are both learning the banjo ? "

" My, no ! " said Mela, " I Ve gone through enough
with the piano. Christine is learning it."

8 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

" I 'm so glad you are making my banjo useful at
the outset, Miss Dryfoos." Both girls stared at her,
but found it hard to cope with the fact that this was
the lady friend whose banjo Beaton had lent them.
"Mr. Beaton mentioned that he had left it here.
I hope you '11 keep it as long as you find it useful."

At this amiable speech even Christine could not
help thanking her. " Of course," she said, " I expect
to get another, right off. Mr. Beaton is going to
choose it for me."

"You are very fortunate. If you haven't a
teacher yet I should so like to recommend mine."

Mela broke out in her laugh again. " Oh, I guess
Christine's pretty well suited with the one she's
got," she said, with insinuation. Her sister gave her
a frowning glance, and Margaret did not tempt her
to explain.

" Then that 's much better," she said. " I have a
kind of superstition in such matters ; I don't like to
make a second choice. In a shop I like to take the
first thing of the kind I 'm looking for, and even if I
choose further I come back to the original."

" How funny ! " said Mela. " Well, now, I 'm just
the other way. I always take the last thing, after
I 've picked over all the rest. My luck always seems
to be at the bottom of the heap. Now, Christine,
she 's more like you. I believe she could walk right
up blindfolded and put her hand on the thing she
•wants every time."

" I 'm like father," said Christine, softened a little
by the celebration of her peculiarity. " He says the

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 9

reason so many people don't get what they want is
that they don't want it bad enough. Now, when I
want a thing, it seems to me that I want it all
through."

"Well, that's just like father, too," said Mela.
" That 's the way he done when he got that eighty-
acre piece next to Moffitt that he kept when he sold
the farm, and that 's got some of the best gas wells on
it now that there is anywhere." She addressed the
explanation to her sister, to the exclusion of Mar-
garet, who, nevertheless, listened with a smiling face
and a resolutely polite air of being a party to the
conversation. Mela rewarded her amiability by say-
ing to her finally, " You never been in the natural-
gas country, have you ? "

" Oh no ! And I should so much like to see
it ! " said Margaret, with a fervour that was partly
voluntary.

" Would you 1 Well, we 're kind of sick of it, but
I suppose it would strike a stranger."

"/never got tired of looking at the big wells when
they lit them up," said Christine. " It seems as if
the world was on fire."

" Yes, and when you see the surface-gas ournun'
down in the woods, like it used to by our spring-
house — so still, and never spreadun' any, just like a
bed of some kind of wild-flowers when you ketch
sight of it a piece off."

They began to tell of the wonders of their strange
land in an antiphony of reminiscences and descrip-
tions ; they unconsciously imputed a merit to them-
1*

10 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

selves from the number and violence of the wells on
their father's property ; they bragged of the high
civilisation of Moffitt, which they compared to its
advantage with that of New York. They became
excited by Margaret's interest in natural gas, and
forgot to be suspicious and envious.

She said, as she rose, "Oh, how much I should
like to see it all ! " Then she made a little pause
and added, " I 'm so sorry my aunt's Thursdays are
over ; she never has them after Lent, but we 're to
have some people Tuesday evening at a little concert
which a musical friend is going to give with some
other artists. There won't be any banjos, I 'm
afraid, but there '11 be some very good singing, and
my aunt would be so glad if you could come with
your mother."

She put down her aunt's card on the table near
her, while Mela gurgled, as if it were the best joke,
" Oh, my ! Mother never goes anywhere ; you
couldn't get her out for love or money." But she
was herself overwhelmed with a simple joy at Mar-
garet's politeness, and showed it in a sensuous way,
like a child, as if she had been tickled. She came
closer to Margaret and seemed about to fawn physi-
cally upon her.

" Ain't she just as lovely as she can live ? "
she demanded of her sister when Margaret was
gone.

"I don't know," said Christine. "I guess she
wanted to know who Mr. Beaton had been lending
her banjo to." <

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 11

" Pshaw ! Do you suppose she 's in love with
him 1 " asked Mela, and then she broke into her
hoarse laugh at the look her sister gave her. " Well,
don't eat me, Christine ! I wonder who she is, any-
way 1 I'm. goun' to git it out of Mr. Beaton the
next time he calls. I guess she 's somebody. Mrs.
Mandel can tell. I wish that old friend of hers
would hurry up and git well — or something. But I
guess we appeared about as well as she did. I could
see she was afraid of you, Christine. I reckon it 's
gittun' around a little about father; and when it
does I don't believe we shall want for callers. Say,
are you goun' 1 To that concert of theirs ? "

"I don't know. Not till I know who they are
first."

" Well, we Ve got to hump ourselves if we 're
goun' to find out before Tuesday."

As she went home Margaret felt wrought in her
that most incredible of the miracles, which, neverthe-
less, any one may make his experience. She felt
kindly to these girls because she had tried to make
, them happy, and she hoped that in the interest she
had shown there had been none of the poison of
flattery. She was aware that this was a risk she
ran in such an attempt to do good. If she had
escaped this effect she was willing to leave the rest
•with Providence.

VIII.

THE notion that a girl of Margaret Vance's tradi-
tions would naturally form of girls like Christine and
Mela Dryfoos would be that they were abashed in
the presence of the new conditions of their lives, and
that they must receive the advance she had made
them with a certain grateful humility. However
they received it, she had made it upon principle,
from a romantic conception of duty ; but this was
the way she imagined they would receive it, because
she thought that she would have done so if she had
been as ignorant and unbred as they. Her error was
in arguing their attitude from her own temperament,
and endowing them, for the purposes of argument,
with her perspective. They had not the means, intel-
lectual or moral, of feeling as she fancied. If they had
remained at home on the farm where they were born,
Christine would have groAvn up that embodiment of
impassioned suspicion which we find oftenest in the
narrowest spheres, and Mela would always have been
a good-natured simpleton ; but they would never
have doubted their equality with the wisest and the
finest. As it was, they had not learned enough at
school to doubt it, and the splendour of their father's

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 13

success in making money had blinded them for ever
to any possible difference against them. They had
no question of themselves in the social abeyance to
which they had been left in New York. They had
been surprised, mystified; it was not what they
had expected ; there must be some mistake. They
were the victims of an accident, which would be re-
paired as soon as the fact of their father's wealth had
got around. They had been steadfast in their faith,
through all their disappointment, that they were not
only better than most people by virtue of his money,
but as good as any ; and they took Margaret's visit,
so far as they investigated its motive, for a sign that
at last it was beginning to get around ; of course, a
thing could not get around in New York so quick as
it could in a small place. They were confirmed in
their belief by the sensation of Mrs. Mandel when
she returned to duty that afternoon, and they con-
sulted her about going to Mrs. Horn's musicale. If
she had felt any doubt at the name — for there were
Horns and Horns — the address on the card put the
matter beyond question ; and she tried to make her
charges understand what a precious chance had be-
fallen them. She did not succeed ; they had not the
premises, the experience, for a sufficient impression ;
and she undid her work in part by the effort to
explain that Mrs. Horn's standing was independent
of money ; that though she was positively rich, she
was comparatively poor. Christine inferred that
Miss Vance had called because she wished to be the
first to get in with them since it had begun to get

14 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

around. This view commended itself to Mela too,
but without warping her from her opinion that Miss
Vance was all the same too sweet for anything. She
had not so vivid a consciousness of her father's
money as Christine had; but she reposed perhaps
all the more confidently upon its power. She was
far from thinking meanly of any one who thought
highly of her for it ; that seemed so natural a result
as to be amiable, even admirable; she was willing
that any such person should get all the good there
was in such an attitude toward her.

They discussed the matter that night at dinner
before their father and mother, who mostly sat silent
at their meals; the father frowning absently over
his plate, with his head close to it, and making play
into his mouth with the back of his knife (he had
got so far toward the use of his fork as to despise
those who still ate from the edge of their knives),
and the mother partly missing hers at times in the
nervous tremor that shook her face from side to side.

After a while the subject of Mela's hoarse babble
and of Christine's high-pitched, thin, sharp forays of
assertion and denial in the field which her sister's
voice seemed to cover, made its way into the old
man's consciousness, and he perceived that they were
talking with Mrs. Mandel about it, and that his wife
was from time to time offering an irrelevant and
mistaken comment. He agreed with Christine, and
silently took her view of the affair some time before
he made any sign of having listened. There had
been a time in his life when other things besides his

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 15

money seemed admirable to him. He had once
respected himself for the hard-headed, practical
common-sense which first gave him standing among
his country neighbours ; which made him supervisor,
school trustee, justice of the peace, county commis-
sioner, secretary of the Moffitt County Agricultural
Society. In those days he had served the public
with disinterested zeal and proud ability ; he used
to write to the Lake Shore Farmer on agricultural
topics ; he took part in opposing, through the
Moffitt papers, the legislative waste of the people's
money ; on the question of selling a local canal to
the railroad company, which killed that fine old State
work, and let the dry ditch grow up to grass, he
might have gone to the Legislature, but he contented
himself with defeating the Moffitt member who had
voted for the job. If he opposed some measures for
the general good, like high-schools and school
libraries, it was because he lacked perspective, in his
intense individualism, and suspected all expense of
being spendthrift. He believed in good district
schools, and he had a fondness, crude but genuine,
for some kinds of reading — history, and forensics of
an elementary sort.

With his good head for figures he doubted doctors
and despised preachers ; he thought lawyers were all
rascals, but he respected them for their ability ; he
was not himself litigious, but he enjoyed the intel-
lectual encounters of a difficult lawsuit, and he often
attended a sitting of the fall term of court, when
he went to town, for the pleasure of hearing the

16 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

speeches. He was a good citizen, and a good hus-
band. As a good father, he was rather severe with
his children, and used to whip them, especially the
gentle Conrad, who somehow crossed him most, till
the twins died. After that he never struck any of
them ; and from the sight of a blow dealt a horse he
turned as if sick. It was a long time before he
lifted himself up from his sorrow, and then the will
of the man seemed to have been breached through his
affections. He let the girls do as they pleased — the
twins had been girls ; he let them go away to school,
and got them a piano. It was they who made him
sell the farm. If Conrad had only had their spirit
he could have made him keep it, he felt; and he
resented the want of support he might have found in
a less yielding spirit than his son's.

His moral decay began with his perception of the
opportunity of making money quickly and abun-
dantly, which offered itself to him after he sold hi&
farm. He awoke to it slowly, from a desolation in
which he tasted the last bitter of homesickness, the
utter misery of idleness and listlessness. When he
broke down and cried for the hard-working, whole-
some life he had lost, he was near the end of this
season of despair, but he was also near the end of
what was best in himself. He devolved upon a
meaner ideal than that of conservative good citizen-
ship, which had been his chief moral experience : the
money he had already made without effort and
without merit bred its unholy self-love in him; he
began to honour money, especially money that had

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 17

"been Avon suddenly and in large sums ; for money
that had been earned, painfully, slowly, and in little
amounts, he had only pity and contempt. The
poison of that ambition to go somewhere and be
somebody which the local speculators had instilled
Into him began to work in the vanity which had
succeeded his somewhat scornful self-respect ; he re-
jected Europe as the proper field for his expansion ;
lie rejected Washington ; he preferred New York,
whither the men who have made money and do not
yet know that money has made them, all instinctively
turn. He came where he could watch his money
"breed more money, and bring greater increase of its
kind in an hour of luck than the toil of hundreds of
men could earn in a year. He called it speculation,
stocks, the street ; and his pride, his faith in himself,
mounted with his luck. He expected, when he had
sated his greed, to begin to spend, and he had formu-
lated an intention to build a great house, to add
another to the palaces of the country-bred million-
aires who have come to adorn the great city. In the
meantime he made little account of the things that
occupied his children, except to fret at the ungrateful
indifference of his son to the interests that could alone
make a man of him. He did not know whether his
daughters were in society or not ; with people coming
and going in the house he would have supposed they
must be so, no matter who the people were ; in some
vague way he felt that he had hired society in Mrs.
Mandel, at so much a year. He never met a superior
himself, except now and then a man of twenty or

18 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

thirty millions to his one or two, and then he felt
his soul creep within him, without a sense of social
inferiority ; it was a question of financial inferiority ;
and though Dryfoos's soul bowed itself and crawled,
it was with a gambler's admiration of wonderful luck.
Other men said these many-millioned millionaires
were smart, and got their money by sharp practices
to which lesser men could not attain ; but Dryfoos
believed that he could compass the same ends, by the
same means, with the same chances ; he respected
their money, not them.

When he now heard Mrs. Mandel and his daughters
talking of that person, whoever she was, that Mrs.
Mandel seemed to think had honoured his girls by
coming to see them, his curiosity was pricked as
much as his pride was galled.

" Well, anyway," said Mela, " I don't care whether
Christine's goun' or not ; / am. And you got to go
with me, Mrs. Mandel."

"Well, there's a little difficulty," said Mrs.
Mandel, with her unfailing dignity and politeness.
" I haven't been asked, you know."

" Then what are we goun' to do 1 " demanded
Mela, almost crossly. She was physically too amiable,
she felt too well corporeally, ever to be quite cross.
"She might 'a' knowed — well known — we couldn't
'a' come alone, in New York. I don't see why we
couldn't. I don't call it much of an invitation."
• " I suppose she thought you could come with your
mother," Mrs. Mandel suggested.

" She didn't say anything about mother. Did she,

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 19

Christine 1 Or, yes, she did, too. And I told her
she couldn't git mother out. Don't you remember?"

" I didn't pay much attention," said Christine. "I
wasn't certain we wanted to go."

" I reckon you wasn't goun' to let her see that we
cared much," said Mela, half reproachful, half proud
of this attitude of Christine. " Well, I don't see but
what we got to stay at home." She laughed at this
lame conclusion of the matter.

" Perhaps Mr. Conrad — you could very properly

take him without an express invitation " Mrs.

Mandel began.

Conrad looked up in alarm and protest. "I — I
don't think I could go that evening "

"What's the reason?" his father broke in harshly.
"You 're not such a sheep that you 're afraid to go
into company with your sisters ? Or are you too
good to go with them ? "

" If it 's to be anything like that night when them
hussies come out and danced that way," said Mrs.
Dryfoos, " I don't blame Coonrod for not wantun* to
go. I never saw the beat of it."

Mela sent a yelling laugh across the table to her
mother. "Well, I wish Miss Vance could V heard
that ! Why, mother, did you think it was like the
ballet ? "

" Well, I didn't know, Mely, child," said the old
woman. " I didn't know what it was like. I hain't
never been to one, and you can't be too keerf ul where •
you go, in a place like New York"

" What 's the reason you can't go ? " Dryfoos

20 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

ignored the passage between his wife and daughter in
making this demand of his son, with a sour face.

" I have an engagement that night — it 's one of
our meetings "

" I reckon you can let your meeting go for one
night," said Dryf oos. " It can't be so important as
all that, that you must disappoint your sisters."

"I don't like to disappoint those poor creatures.
They depend so much upon the meetings "

" I reckon they can stand it for one night," said
the old man. He added, " The poor ye have with
you always."

" That 's so, Coonrod," said his mother. "It 's the
Saviour's own words."

" Yes, mother. But they 're not meant just as
father used them."

" How do you know how they were meant 1 Or
how I used them ? " cried the father. " Now you
just make your plans to go with the girls, Tuesday
night. They can't go alone, and Mrs. Mandel can't
go with them."

" Pshaw ! " said Mela. " We don't want to take
Conrad away from his meetun', do we, Chris 1 "

" I don't know," said Christine, in her high, fine
voice. " They could get along without him for one
night, as father says."

" Well, I 'm not agoun' to take him," said Mela,
" Now, Mrs. Mandel, just think out some other way.
Say ! What 's the reason we couldn't get somebody
else to take us just as well ? Ain't that rulable ?"

" It would be allowable "

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 21

" Allowable, I mean" Mela corrected herself.

"But it might look a little significant, unless it
was some old family friend."

" Well, let 's get Mr. Fulkerson to take us. He 's
the oldest family friend we got."

" I won't go with Mr. Fulkerson," said Christine
serenely.

" Why, I 'm sure, Christine," her mother pleaded,
" Mr. Fulkerson is a very good young man, and very
nice appearun'."

Mela shouted, " He 's ten times as pleasant as that
old Mr. Beaton of Christine's ! "

Christine made no effort to break the constraint
that fell upon the table at this sally, but her father
said, " Christine is right, Mela. It wouldn't do for
you to go with any other young man. Conrad will
go with you."

" I 'm not certain I want to go, yet," said Chris-
tine.

" Well, settle that among yourselves. But if you
want to go, your brother will go with you."

" Of course, Coonrod '11 go, if his sisters wants
him to," the old woman pleaded. " I reckon it ain't
agoun' to be anything very bad ; and if it is, Coon-
rod, why you can just git right up and come out."

" It will be all right, mother. And I will go, of
course."

"There, now, I knowed you would, Coonrod.
Now, fawther ! " This appeal was to make the old
man say something in recognition of Conrad's sacri-
fice.

2A

22 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

" You '11 always find," he said, " that it 's those of
your own household that have the first claim on
you."

" That 's so, Coonrod", urged his mother. " It 's
Bible truth. Your fawther ain't a perfesser, but he
always read his Bible. Search the Scriptures.
That 's what it means."

" Laws !" cried Mely, " a body can see, easy
enough from mother, where Conrad's wantun' to be
a preacher comes from. I should V thought she 'd
'a' wanted to been one herself."

" Let your women keep silence in the churches,"
said the old woman solemnly.

" There you go again, mother ! I guess if you
was to say that to some of the lady ministers nowa-
days, you 'd git yourself into trouble." Mela looked
round for approval, and gurgled out a hoarse laugh.

IX.

THE Dryfooses went late to Mrs. Horn's musicale
in spite of Mrs. Mandel's advice. Christine made
the delay, both because she wished to show Miss
Vance that she was not anxious, and because she
had some vague notion of the distinction of arriving
late at any sort of entertainment. Mrs. Mandel
insisted upon the difference between this musicale
and an ordinary reception ; but Christine rather
fancied disturbing a company that had got seated,
and perhaps making people rise and stand, while
she found her way to her place, as she had seen
them do for a tardy comer at the theatre.

Mela, whom she did not admit to her reasons or
feelings always, followed her with the servile
admiration she had for all that Christine did ; and
she took on trust as somehow successful the result
of Christine's obstinacy, when they were allowed
to stand against the wall at the back of the room
through the whole of the long piece begun just
before they came in. There had been no one to
receive them ; a few people, in the rear rows of
chairs near them, turned their heads to glance at
them, and then looked away again. Mela had her

24 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

misgivings ; but at the end of the piece Miss Vance
came up to them at once, and then Mela knew that
she had her eyes on them all the time, and that
Christine must have been right. Christine said
nothing about their coming late, and so Mela did
not make any excuse, and Miss Vance seemed to
expect none. She glanced with a sort of surprise at
Conrad, when Christine introduced him; Mela did
not know whether she liked their bringing him, till
she shook hands with him, and said, " Oh, I am
very glad indeed ! Mr. Dryfoos and I have met)
before." Without explaining where or when, she
led them to her aunt and presented them, and then
said, "I'm going to put you with some friends of
yours," and quickly seated them next the Marches.
Mela liked that well enough; she thought she
might have some joking with Mr. March, for all his
wife was so stiff; but the look which Christine
wore seemed to forbid, provisionally at least, any
such recreation. On her part, Christine was cool
with the Marches. It went through her mind that
they must have told Miss Vance they knew her;
and perhaps they had boasted of her intimacy.
She relaxed a little toward them when she saw
Beaton leaning against the wall at the end of the
row next Mrs. March. Then she conjectured that
he might have told Miss Vance of her acquaintance
with the Marches, and she bent forward and nodded
to Mrs. March across Conrad, Mela, and Mr. March.
She conceived of him as a sort of hand of her
father's, but she was willing to take them at their

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 25

apparent social valuation for the time. She leaned
back in her chair, and did not look up at Beaton
after the first furtive glance, though she felt his
eyes on her.

The music began again almost at once, before
Mela had time to make Conrad tell her where Miss
Vance had met him before. She would not have
minded interrupting the music ; but every one else
seemed so attentive, even Christine that she had
not the courage.

The concert went on to an end without realising
for. her the ideal of pleasure which one ought to
find in society. She was not exacting, but it seemed
to her there were very few young men, and when
the music was over, and their opportunity came to
be sociable, they were not very sociable. They
were not introduced, for one thing ; but it appeared
to Mela that they might have got introduced, if
they had any sense ; she saw them looking at her,
and she was glad she had dressed so much ; she was
dressed more than any other lady there, and either
because she was the most dressed of any person
there, or because it had got around who her father
was, she felt that she had made an impression on the
young men. In her satisfaction with this, and from
her good nature, she was contented to be served
with her refreshments after the concert by Mr.
March, and to remain joking with him. She was at
her ease ; she let her hoarse voice out in her largest
laugh ; she accused him, to the admiration of those
near, of getting her into a perfect gale. It appeared
VOL. II.— 2

26 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

to her, in her own pleasure, her mission to illustrate
to the rather subdued people about her what a good
time really was, so that they could have it if they
wanted it. Her joy was crowned when March
modestly professed himself unworthy to monopolise
her, and explained how selfish he felt in talking to a
young lady when there were so many young men
dying to do so.

" Oh, pshaw dyun', yes ! " cried Mela, tasting the
irony. " I guess I see them ! "

He asked if he might really introduce a friend
of his to her, and she said, Well, yes, if he thought
he could live to get to her ; and March brought up
a man whom he thought very young and Mela
thought very old. He was a contributor to Every
Other Week, and so March knew him ; he believed
himself a student of human nature in behalf of
literature, and he now set about studying Mela.
He tempted her to express her opinion on all points,
and he laughed so amiably at the boldness and
humorous vigour of her ideas that she was delighted
with him. She asked him if he was a New-Yorker
by birth ; and she told him she pitied him, when he
said he had never been West. She professed her-
self perfectly sick of New York, and urged him to
go to Moffitt if he wanted to see a real live town.
He wondered if it would do to put her into literature
just as she was, with all her slang and brag, but he
decided that he would have to subdue her a great
deal : he did not see how he could reconcile the facts
of her conversation with the facts of her appearance :

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 27

her beauty, her splendour of dress, her apparent
right to be where she was. These things perplexed
him; he was afraid the great American novel, if
true, must be incredible. Mela said he ought to
hear her sister go on about New York when they
first came ; but she reckoned that Christine was
getting so she could put up with it a little better,
now. She looked significantly across the room to
the place where Christine was now talking with
Beaton ; and the student of human nature asked,
Was she here ? and, Would she introduce him ?
Mela said she would, the first chance she got ; and
she added, They would be much pleased to have
him call. She felt herself to be having a beautiful
time, and she got directly upon such intimate terms
with the student of human nature that she laughed
with him about some peculiarities of his, such as his
going so far about to ask things he wanted to know
from her ; she said she never did believe in beating
about the bush much. She had noticed the same
thing in Miss Vance when she came to call that
day ; and when the young man owned that he came
rather a good deal to Mrs. Horn's house, she asked
him, Well, what sort of a girl was Miss Vance, any-
way, and where did he suppose she had met her
brother ? The student of human nature could not
say as to this, and as to Miss Vance he judged it
safest to treat of the non-society side of her char-
acter, her activity in charity, her special devotion to
the work among the poor on the East Side, which
she personally engaged in.

28 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

" Oh, that 's where Conrad goes, too ! " Mela inter-
rupted. "I'll bet anything that's where she met
him. I wisht I could tell Christine ! But I suppose
she would want to kill me, if I was to speak to her
now"

The student of human nature said politely, " Oh,
shall I take you to her ? "

Mela answered, " I guess you better not ! " with
a laugh so significant that he could not help his
inferences concerning both Christine's absorption in
the person she was talking with, and the habitual
violence of her temper. He made note of how Mela
helplessly spoke of all her family by their names, as
if he were already intimate with them ; he fancied
that if he could get that in skilfully, it would be a
valuable colour in his study ; the English lord whom
she should astonish with it, began to form himself
out of the dramatic nebulosity in his mind, and to
whirl on a definite orbit in American society. But
he was puzzled to decide whether Mela's willingness
to take him into her confidence on short notice was
typical or personal : the trait of a daughter of the
natural-gas millionaire, or a foible of her own.

Beaton talked with Christine the greater part of
the evening that was left after the concert. He was
very grave, and took the tone of a fatherly friend ;
he spoke guardedly of the people present, and mode-
rated the severity of some of Christine's judgments
of their looks and costumes. He did this out of
a sort of unreasoned allegiance to Margaret, whom
he was in the mood of wishing to please by being

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 29

very kind and good, as she always was. He had
the sense also of atoning by this behaviour for some
reckless things he had said before that to Christine ;
he put on a sad, reproving air with her, and gave
her the feeling of being held in check.

She chafed at it, and said, glancing at Margaret
in talk with her brother, " I don't think Miss Vance
is so very pretty, do you ? "

" I never think whether she 's pretty or not,"
said Beaton, with dreamy affectation. " She is
merely perfect. Does she know your brother ? "

" So she says. I didn't suppose Conrad ever went
anywhere, except to tenement-houses."

"It might have been there," Beaton suggested.
" She goes among friendless people everywhere."

"May be that's the reason she came to see us I"
said Christine.

Beaton looked at her with his smouldering eyes,
and felt the wish to say, " Yes, it was exactly that,"
but he only allowed himself to deny the possibility
of any such motive in that case. He added, " I am
so glad you know her, Miss Dryfoos. I never met
Miss Vance without feeling myself better and truer,
somehow ; or the wish to be so."

"And you think we might be improved too?"
Christine retorted. "Well, I must say you're not
very flattering, Mr. Beaton, anyway."

Beaton would have liked to answer her ac-
cording to her cattishness, with a good clawing
sarcasm that would leave its smart in her pride ;
but he was being good, and he could not change all

30 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

at once. Besides, the girl's attitude under the
social honour done her interested him. He was sure
she had never been in such good company before,
but he could see that she was not in the least
affected by the experience. He had told her who
this person and that was; and he saw she had
understood that the names were of consequence;
but she seemed to feel her equality with them all.
Her serenity was not obviously akin to the savage
stoicism in which Beaton hid his own consciousness
of social inferiority ; but having won his way in the
world so far by his talent, his personal quality, he
did not conceive the simple fact in her case.
Christine was self-possessed because she felt that a
knowledge of her father's fortune had got around,
and she had the peace which money gives to
ignorance ; but Beaton attributed her poise to
indifference to social values. This, while he in-
wardly sneered at it, .avenged him upon his own
too keen sense of them, and, together with his
temporary allegiance to Margaret's goodness, kept
him from retaliating Christine's vulgarity. He said,
"I don't see how that could be," and left the
question of flattery to settle itself.

The people began to go away, following each other
up to take leave of Mrs. Horn. Christine watched
them with unconcern, and either because she would
not be governed by the general movement, or be-
cause she liked being with Beaton, gave no sign
of going. Mela was still talking to the student of
human nature, sending out her laugh in deep gurgles

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 31

amidst the unimaginable confidences she was making
him about herself, her family, the staff of Every
Other Week, Mrs. Mandel, and the kind of life they
had all led before she came to them. He was not a
blind devotee of art for art's sake, and though he
felt that if one could portray Mela just as she was
she would be the richest possible material, he was
rather ashamed to know some of the things she told
him ; and he kept looking anxiously about for a
chance of escape. The company had reduced itself to
the Dryfoos groups and some friends of Mrs. Horn's
who had the right to linger, when Margaret crossed
the room with Conrad to Christine and Beaton.

" I 'm so glad, Miss Dryfoos, to find that I was not
quite a stranger to you all when I ventured to call,
the other day. Your brother and I are rather old ac-
quaintances, though I never knew who he was before.
I don't know just how to say we met where he is
valued so much. I suppose I mustn't try to say how
much," she added with a look of deep regard at him.

Conrad blushed and stood folding his arms tight
over his breast, while his sister received Margaret's
confession with the suspicion which was her first
feeling in regard to any new thing. What she
concluded was that this girl was trying to get in
with them, for reasons of her own. She said :
" Yes ; it 's the first / ever heard of his knowing
you. He 's so much taken up with his meetings, he
didn't want to come to-night."

Margaret drew in her lip before she answered,
without apparent resentment of the awkwardness or

32 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

ungraciousness, whichever she found it, " I don't
wonder ! You become so absorbed in such work
that you think nothing else is worth while. But
I 'm glad Mr. Dryfoos could come with you ; I 'm so
glad you could all come ; I knew you would enjoy
the music. Do sit down —

" No," said Christine bluntly ; " we must be going.
Mela ! " she called out, " come ! "

The last group about Mrs. Horn looked round,
but Christine advanced upon them undismayed, and
took the hand Mrs. Horn promptly gave her. " Well,
I must bid you good night."

" Oh, good night," murmured the elder lady. " So
very kind of you to come."

" I Ve had the best kind of a time," said Mela
cordially. " I hain't laughed so much, I don't know
when."

" Oh, I 'm glad you enjoyed it," said Mrs. Horn
in the same polite murmur she had used with
Christine ; but she said nothing to either sister
about any future meeting.

They were apparently not troubled. Mela said
over her shoulder to the student of human nature,
" The next time I see you I '11 give it to you for
what you said about Moffitt."

Margaret made some entreating paces after them,
but she did not succeed in covering the retreat of
the sisters against critical conjecture. She could
only say to Conrad, as if recurring to the subject, " I
hope we can get our friends to play for us some night.
I know it isn't any real help, but such things take

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 33

the poor creatures out of themselves for the time
being, don't you think ? "

" Oh yes," he answered. " They 're good in that
way." He turned back hesitatingly to Mrs. Horn,
and said, with a blush, " I thank you for a happy
evening."

" Oh, I am very glad," she replied in her murmur.

One of the old friends of the house arched her
eyebrows in saying good night, and offered the two
young men remaining seats home in her carriage.
Beaton gloomily refused, and she kept herself from
asking the student of human nature, till she had got
him into her carriage, "What is Moffitt, and what
did you say about it 1 "

"Now you see, Margaret," said Mrs. Horn, with
bated triumph, when the people were all gone.

"Yes, I see," the girl consented. "From one
point of view, of course it 's been a failure. I don't
think we've given Miss Dryfoos a pleasure, but
perhaps nobody could. And at least we've given
her the opportunity of enjoying herself."

"Such people," said Mrs Horn philosophically,
"people with their money must of course be re-
ceived sooner or later. You can't keep them out.
Only, I believe I would rather let some one else
begin with them. The Leightons didn't come 1 "

" I sent them cards. I couldn't call again."

Mrs. Horn sighed a little. "I suppose Mr.
Dryfoos is one of your fellow-philanthropists ? "

"He's one of the workers," said Margaret "I
2*

34 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

met him several times at the Hall, but I only knew
his first name. I think he 's a great friend of Father
Benedict; he seems devoted to the work. Don't
you think he looks good ? "

" Very," said Mrs. Horn, with a colour of censure
in her assent. "The younger girl seemed more
amiable than her sister. But what manners ! "

" Dreadful ! " said Margaret, with knit brows, and
a pursed mouth of humorous suffering. "But she
appeared to feel very much at home."

"Oh, as to that, neither of them was much
abashed. Do you suppose Mr. Beaton gave the
other one some hints for that quaint dress of hers ?
I don't imagine that black and lace is her own
invention. She seems to have some sort of strange
fascination for him."

"She's very picturesque," Margaret explained.
"And artists see points in people that the rest of
us don't."

" Could it be her money ? " Mrs. Horn insinuated.
" He must be very poor. "

"But he isn't base," retorted the girl with a
generous indignation that made her aunt smile.

" Oh no ; but if he fancies her so picturesque, it
doesn't follow that he would object to her being rich."

" It would with a man like Mr. Beaton ! "

" You are an idealist, Margaret. I suppose your
Mr. March has some disinterested motive in paying
court to Miss Mela — Pamela, I suppose, is her name.
He talked to her longer than her literature would
have lasted."

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 35

"He seems a very kind person," said Margaret.

" And Mr. Dryfoos pays his salary ? "

"I don't know anything about that. But that
wouldn't make any difference with him."

Mrs. Horn laughed out at this security ; but she
was not displeased by the nobleness which it came
from. She liked Margaret to be high-minded, and
was really not distressed by any good that was in
her.

The Marches walked home, both because it was
not far, and because they must spare in carriage hire
at any rate. As soon as they were out of the house,
she applied a point of conscience to him.

"I don't see how you could talk to that girl so
long, Basil, and make her laugh so."

" Why, there seemed no one else to do it, till I
thought of Kendricks."

" Yes, but I kept thinking, Now he 's pleasant to
her because he thinks it's to his interest. If she
had no relation to Every Other Week, he wouldn't
waste his time on her."

" Isabel," March complained, " I wish you wouldn't
think of me in he, him, and his : I never personalise
you in my thoughts : you remain always a vague
unindividualised essence, not quite without form and
void, but nounless and pronounless. I call that a
much more beautiful mental attitude toward the
object of one's affections. But if you must he and
him and his me in your thoughts, I wish you 'd have
more kindly thoughts of me."

36 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

" Do you deny that it 's true, Basil ? "

" Do you believe that it 's true, Isabel 1 "

"' No matter. But could you excuse it if it were ? "

*' Ah, I see you 'd have been capable of it in my
place, and you're ashamed."

" Yes," sighed the wife, " I 'm afraid that I should.
But tell me that you wouldn't, Basil ! "

" I can tell you that I wasn't. But I suppose that
in a real exigency, I could truckle to the proprietary
Dryfooses as well as you."

" Oh no ; you mustn't, dear ! I 'm a woman, and
I 'm dreadfully afraid. But you must always be a
man, especially with that horrid old Mr. Dryfoos.
Promise me that you '11 never yield the least point
to him in a matter of right and wrong ! "

" Not, if he 's right and I 'm wrong 1 "

" Don't trifle, dear ! You know what I mean.
Will you promise ? "

" I '11 promise to submit the point to you, and let
you do the yielding. As for me, I shall be adamant.
Nothing I like better."

"They're dreadful, even that poor, good young
fellow, who's so different from all the rest; he's
awful, too, because you feel that he 's a martyr to
them."

"And I never did like martyrs a great deal,"
March interposed.

"I wonder how they came to be there," Mrs.
March pursued, unmindful of his joke.

"That is exactly what seemed to be puzzling
Miss Mela about us. She asked, and I explained

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 37

as well as I could; and then she told me that
Miss Vance had corne to call on them and invited
them; and first they didn't know how they could
come till they thought of making Conrad bring
them. But she didn't say why Miss Vance called
on them. Mr. Dryfoos doesn't employ her on Every
Other Week. But I suppose she has her own vile
little motive."

" It can't he their money ; it can't be ! " sighed
Mrs. March.

"Well, I don't know. We all respect money."

" Yes, but Miss Vance's position is so secure. She
needn't pay court to those stupid, vulgar people."

" Well, let 's console ourselves with the belief that
she would, if she needed. Such people as the
Dryfooses are the raw material of good society. It
made up of refined or meritorious people —
professors and litterateurs, ministers and musicians,
and their families. All the fashionable people there
to-night were like the Dryfooses a generation or
two ago. I dare say the material works up faster
now, and in a season or two you won't know the
Dryfooses from the other plutocrats. They will —
a little better than they do now; they'll see a
difference, but nothing radical, nothing painful.
People who get up in the world by service to others
— through letters, or art, or science — may have
their modest little misgivings as to their social value,
but people that rise by money — especially if their
gains are sudden — never have. And that 's the kind
of people that form our nobility ; there 's no use
2B

38 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

pretending that we haven't a nobility; we might
as well pretend we haven't first-class cars in the
presence of a vestibuled Pullman. Those girls had
no more doubt of their right to be there than if
they had been duchesses : we thought it was very
nice of Miss Vance to come and ask us, but they
didn't ; they weren't afraid, or the least embarrassed ;
they were perfectly natural — like born aristocrats.
And you may be sure that if the plutocracy that
now owns the country ever sees fit to take on
the outward signs of an aristocracy — titles, and
arms, and ancestors — it won't falter from any
inherent question of its worth. Money prizes and
honours itself, and if there is anything it hasn't got,
it believes it can buy it."

" Well, Basil," said his wife, " I hope you won't
get infected with Lindau's ideas of rich people.
Some of them are very good and kind."

" Who denies that ? Not even Lindau himself.
It's all right. And the great thing is that the
evening's enjoyment is over. I 've got my society
smile off, and I 'm radiantly happy. Go on with
your little pessimistic diatribes, Isabel; you can't
spoil my pleasure."

" I could see," said Mela, as she and Christine
drove home together, "that she was as jealous as
she could be, all the time you was talkun' to Mr.
Beaton. She pretended to be talkun' to Conrad,
but she kep' her eye on you pretty close, I can tell
you. I bet she just got us there to see how him

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 39

and you would act together. And I reckon she
was satisfied. He 's dead gone on you, Chris."

Christine listened with a dreamy pleasure to the
flatteries with which Mela plied her in the hope of
some return in kind, and not at all because she felt
spitefully toward Miss Vance, or in anywise wished
her ill. " Who was that fellow with you so long ? "
asked Christine. "I suppose you turned yourself
inside out to him, like you always do."

Mela was transported by the cruel ingratitude.
" It 's a lie ! I didn't tell him a single thing."

Conrad walked home, choosing to do so because
he did not wish to hear his sisters' talk of the even-
ing, and because there was a tumult in his spirit
which he wished to let have its way. In his life
with its single purpose, defeated by stronger wills
than his own, and now struggling partially to fulfil
itself in acts of devotion to others, the thought of
women had entered scarcely more than in that of
a child. His ideals were of a virginal vagueness ;
faces, voices, gestures had filled his fancy at times,
but almost passionlessly ; and the sensation that he
now indulged was a kind of worship, ardent, but
reverent and exalted. The brutal experiences of the
world make us forget that there are such natures in
it, and that they seem to come up out of the lowly
earth as well as down from the high heaven. In the
heart of this man well on toward thirty there had
never been left the stain of a base thought ; not that,
suggestion and conjecture had not visited him, but

40 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

that he had not entertained them, or in anywise
made them his. In a Catholic age and country, he
would have been one of those monks who are
sainted after death for the angelic purity of their
lives, and whose names are invoked by believers
in moments of trial, like San Luigi Gonzaga. As
he now walked along thinking, with a lover's beati-
fied smile on his face, of how Margaret Vance had
spoken and looked, he dramatised scenes in which
he approved himself to her by acts of goodness and
unselfishness, and died to please her for the sake of
others. He made her praise him for them, to his
face, when he disclaimed their merit, and after his
death, when he could not. All the time he was
poignantly sensible of her grace, her elegance, her
style ; they seemed to intoxicate him ; some tones
of her voice thrilled through his nerves, and some
looks turned his brain with a delicious, swooning
sense of her beauty ; her refinement bewildered him.
But all this did not admit the idea of possession,
even of aspiration. At the most his worship only
set her beyond the love of other men as far as
beyond his own.

PAET FOURTH.

I.

NOT long after Lent, Fulkerson set before Dry-
foos one day his scheme for a dinner in celebration
of the success of Every Other Week. Dryfoos had
never meddled in any manner with the conduct of
the periodical; but Fulkerson easily saw that he
was proud of his relation to it, and he proceeded
upon the theory that he would be willing to have
this relation known. On the days when he had
been lucky in stocks, he was apt to drop in at the
office on Eleventh Street, on his way uptown, and
listen to Fulkerson's talk. He was on good enough
terms with March, who revised his first impressions
of the man, but they had not much to say to each
other, and it seemed to March that Dryfoos was
even a little afraid of him, as of a piece of mechanism
he had acquired, but did not quite understand ; he
left the working of it to Fulkerson, who no doubt
bragged of it sufficiently. The old man seemed to
have as little to say to his son ; he shut himself up
with Fulkerson, where the others could hear the man-

42 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

ager begin and go on with an unstinted flow of talk
about Every Other Week ; for Fulkerson never talked
of anything else if he could help it, and was always
bringing the conversation back to it if it strayed.

The day he spoke of the dinner he rose and called
from his door, "March, I say, come down here a
minute, will you? Conrad, I want you, too."

The editor and the publisher found the manager
and the proprietor seated on opposite sides of the
table. " It 's about those funeral baked meats, you
know," Fulkerson explained, " and I was trying to
give Mr. Dryfoos some idea of what we wanted to
do. That is, what I wanted to do," he continued,
turning from March to Dryfoos. " March, here, is
opposed to it, of course. He 'd like to publish Every
Other Week on the sly; keep it out of the papers,
and off the news-stands ; he 's a modest Boston
petunia, and he shrinks from publicity ; but I am
not that kind of herb myself, and I want all the
publicity we can get — beg, borrow, or steal — for
this thing. I say that you can't work the sacred
rites of hospitality in a better cause, and what I
propose is a little dinner for the purpose of recognis-
ing the hit we 've made with this thing. My idea
was to strike you for the necessary funds, and do
the thing on a handsome scale. The term little
dinner is a mere figure of speech. A little dinner
wouldn't make a big talk, and what we want is the
big talk, at present, if we don't lay up a cent. My
notion was that pretty soon after Lent, now, when
everybody is feeling just right, we should begin to

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 43

send out our paragraphs, affirmative, negative, and
explanatory, and along about the first of May we
should sit down about a hundred strong, the most
distinguished people in the country, and solemnise
our triumph. There it is in a nutshell. I might
expand and I might expound, but that's the sum
and substance of it."

Fulkerson stopped, and ran his eyes eagerly over
the faces of his three listeners, one after the other.
March was a little surprised when Dryfoos turned
to him, but that reference of the question seemed to
give Fulkerson particular pleasure : " What do you
think, Mr. March 1 "

The editor leaned back in his chair. "I don't
pretend to have Mr. Fulkerson's genius for advertis-
ing ; but it seems to me a little early yet. . We
might celebrate later when we 've got more to cele-
brate. At present we 're a pleasing novelty, rather
than a fixed fact."

" Ah, you don't get the idea ! " said Fulkerson.
" What we want to do with this dinner is to fix the
fact."

" Am I going to come in anywhere ? " the old
man interrupted.

" You 're going to come in at the head of the pro-
cession ! We are going to strike everything that is
imaginative and romantic in the newspaper soul
with you and your history and your fancy for going
in for this thing. I can start you in a paragraph
that will travel through all the newspapers, from
Maine to Texas and from Alaska to Florida. We

44 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

have had all sorts of rich men backing up literary
enterprises, but the natural-gas man in literature is
a new thing, and the combination of your pic-
turesque past and your aesthetic present is some-
thing that will knock out the sympathies of the
American public the first round. I feel," said
Fulkerson, with a tremor of pathos in his voice,
" that Every Other Week is at a disadvantage before
the public as long as it 's supposed to be my enter-
prise, my idea. As far as I 'm known at all, I 'm
known simply as a syndicate man, and nobody in
the press believes that I Ve got the money to run
the thing on a grand scale; a suspicion of insolvency
must attach to it sooner or later, and the fellows on
the press will work up that impression, sooner or
later, if we don't give them something else to work
up. Now, as soon as I begin to give it away to the
correspondents that you're in it, with your untold
millions — that in fact it was your idea from the
start, that you originated it to give full play to
the humanitarian tendencies of Conrad here, Avho 's
always had these theories of co-operation, and
longed to realise them for the benefit of our strug-
gling young Avriters and artists "

March had listened with growing amusement to
the mingled burlesque and earnest of Fulkerson's
self-sacrificing impudence, and with wonder as to
how far Dryfoos was consenting to his preposterous
proposition, when Conrad broke out, "Mr. Fulker-
son, I could not allow you to do that. It would not
be true ; I did not wish to be here ; and — and what I

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 45

think — what I wish to do — that is something I will
not let any one put me in a false position about.
No ! " The blood rushed into the young man's
gentle face, and he met his father's glance with
'defiance.

Dryfoos turned from him to Fulkerson without
speaking, and Fulkerson said caressingly, "Why,
of course, Coonrod ! I know how you feel, and I
shouldn't let anything of that sort go out uncontra-
dicted afterwards. But there isn't anything in these
times that would give us better standing with the
public than some hint of the way you feel about
such things. The public expects to be interested,
and nothing would interest it more than to be told
that the success of Every Other Week sprang from the
first application of the principle of Live and let Live
to a literary enterprise. It would look particularly
well, coming from you and your father, but if you
object, Ave can leave that part out ; though if you
approve of the principle I don't see why you need
object. The main thing is to let the public know
that it owes this thing to the liberal and enlightened
spirit of one of the foremost capitalists of the country,
and that his purposes are not likely to be betrayed
in the hands of his son. I should get a little cut
made from a photograph of your father, and supply
it gratis with the paragraphs."

"I guess," said the old man, "we will get along
without the cut."

Fulkerson laughed. " Well, well ! Have it your
own way. But the sight of your face in the patent

46 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

outsides of the country press, would be worth half a
dozen subscribers in every school district through-
out the length and breadth of this fair land."

" There was a fellow," Dryfoos explained in an
aside to March, "that was getting up a history of
MofFett, and he asked me to let him put a steel
engraving of me in. He said a good many promi-
nent citizens were going to have theirs in, and his
price was a hundred and fifty dollars. I told him I
couldn't let mine go for less than two hundred, and
when he said he could give me a splendid plate for
that money, I said I should want it cash. You
never saw a fellow more astonished when he got it
through him that I expected him to pay the two
hundred."

Fulkerson laughed in keen appreciation of the
joke. " Well, sir, I guess Every Other IPeek will pay
you that much. But if you won't sell at any price,
all right ; we must try to worry along without the
light of your countenance on the posters, but we got
to have it for the banquet."

" I don't seem to feel very hungry, yet," said the
old man drily.

" Oh, I'appetit vient en mangeant, as our French
friends say. You'll be hungry enough when you
see the preliminary Little Neck clam. It 's too late
for oysters."

" Doesn't that fact seem to point to a postpone-
ment till they get back, sometime in October,"
March suggested.

" No, no ! " said Fulkerson, " you don't catch on

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES, 47

to the business end of this thing, my friends. You 're
proceeding on something like the old exploded idea
that the demand creates the supply, when every-
body knows, if he 's watched the course of modern
events, that it 's just as apt to be the other way. I
contend that we Ve got a real substantial success to
celebrate now ; but even if we hadn't, the celebra-
tion would do more than anything else to create the
success, if we got it properly before the public.
People will say, Those fellows are not fools ; they
wouldn't go and rejoice over their magazine unless
they had got a big thing in it. And the state of
feeling we. should produce in the public mind would
make a boom of perfectly unprecedented grandeur
for E. 0. W. Heigh ? "

He looked sunnily from one to the other in suc-
cession. The elder Dryfoos said, with his chin on
the top of his stick, "I reckon those Little Neck
clams will keep."

"Well, just as -you say," Fulkerson cheerfully
assented. " I understand you to agree to the
general principle of a little dinner ? "

" The smaller the better," said the old man.

"Well, I say a little dinner because the idea of
that seems to cover the case, even if we vary the
plan a little. I had thought of a reception, may be,
that would include the lady contributors and artists,
and the Avives and daughters of the other contribu-
tors. That would give us the chance to ring in a
lot of society correspondents and get the thing
written up in first-class shape. By the way ! " cried

48 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

Fulkerson, slapping himself on the leg, "why not
have the dinner and the reception both ? "

" I don't understand," said Dryfoos.

" Why, have a select little dinner for ten or
twenty choice spirits of the male persuasion, and
then about ten o'clock, throw open your palatial
drawing-rooms and admit the females to champagne,
salads, and ices. It is the very thing ! Come ! "

" What do you think of it, Mr. March ? " asked
Dryfoos, on whose social inexperience Fulkerson's
words projected no very intelligible image, and who
perhaps hoped for some more light.

"It's a beautiful vision," said March, "and if it
will take more time to realise it I think I approve.
I approve of anything that will delay Mr. Fulker-
son's advertising orgie."

" Then," Fulkerson pursued, " we could have the
pleasure of Miss Christine and Miss Mela's company ;
and may be Mrs. Dryfoos would look in on us in
the course of the evening. There's no hurry, as
Mr. March suggests, if we can give the thing this
shape. I will cheerfully adopt the idea of my
honourable colleague."

March laughed at his impudence, but at heart he
was ashamed of Fulkerson for proposing to make
use of Dryfoos and his house in that way. He
fancied something appealing in the look that the
old man turned on him, and something indignant
in Conrad's flush ; but probably this was only his
fancy. He reflected that neither of them coiild feel
it as people of more worldly knowledge would, and

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 49

he consoled himself with the fact that Fulkerson
was really not such a charlatan as he seemed. But
it went through his mind that this was a strange
end for all Dryfoos's money -making to come to ; and
he philosophically accepted the fact of his own
humble fortunes when he reflected how little his
money could buy for such a man. It was an
"honourable use that Fulkerson was putting it to in
Every Other Week ; it might be far more creditably
spent on such an enterprise than on horses, or wines,
or women, the usual resources of the brute rich ; and
if it were to be lost, it might better be lost that way
than in stocks. He kept a smiling face turned to
Dryfoos while these irreverent considerations occu-
pied him, and hardened his heart against father and
son and their possible emotions.

The old man rose to put an end to the interview.
He only repeated, " I guess those clams will keep
till fall."

But Fulkerson was apparently satisfied with the
progress he had made ; and when he joined March
for the stroll homeward after office hours, he was
able to detach his mind from the subject, as if
content to leave it.

" This is about the best part of the year in New
York," he said. In some of the areas the grass had
sprouted, and the tender young foliage had loosened
itself from the buds on a sidewalk tree here and
there ; the soft air was full of spring, and the deli-
cate sky, far aloof, had the look it never wears at
any other season. " It ain't a time of year to* com-
VOL. II.— 3

50 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

plain much of, anywhere; but I don't want any-
thing better than the month of May in New York.
Farther South it 's too hot, and I 've been in Boston
in May when that east wind of yours made every
nerve in my body get up and howl. I reckon the
weather has a good deal to do with the local
temperament. The reason a New York man takes
life so easily with all his rush is that his climate
don't worry him. But a Boston man must be
rasped the whole while by the edge in his. air.
That accounts for his sharpness ; and when he 's
lived through twenty-five or thirty Boston Mays,
he gets to thinking that Providence has some par-
ticular use for him, or he wouldn't have survived,
and that makes him conceited. See ? "

" I see," said March. " But I don't know how
you're going to work that idea into an advertise-
ment, exactly."

" Oh, pshaw, now, March ! You don't think I 've
got that on the brain all the time 1 "

" You were gradually leading up to Every Other
Week, somehow."

" No, sir ; I wasn't. I was just thinking what a
different creature a Massachusetts man was from a
Virginian. And yet I suppose they 're both as pure
English stock as you'll get anywhere in America.
March, I think Colonel Woodburn's paper is going
to make a hit."

" You 've got there ! When it knocks down the
sale about one-half, I shall know it 's made a hit."

"I'm not afraid," said Fulkerson. "That thing

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 51

is going to attract attention. It's well written —
you can take the pomposity out of it, here and there
• — and it 's novel. Our people like a bold strike, and
it 's going to shake them up tremendously to have
serfdom advocated on high moral grounds as the
only solution of the labour problem. You see in
the first place he goes for their sympathies by the
way he portrays the actual relations of capital and
labour ; he shows how things have got to go from
bad to worse, and then he trots out his little old
hobby, and proves that if slavery had not been
interfered with, it would have perfected itself in the
interest of humanity. He makes a pretty strong
plea for it."

March threw back his head and laughed. " He 's
converted you ! I swear, Fulkerson, if we had
accepted and paid for an article advocating canni-
balism as the only resource for getting rid of the
superfluous poor, you 'd begin to believe in it."

Fulkerson smiled in approval of the joke, and
only said, "I wish you could meet the colonel in the
privacy of the domestic circle, March. You 'd like
him. He 's a splendid old fellow ; regular type.
Talk about spring ! You ought to see the widow's
little back yard these days. You know that glass
gallery just beyond the dining-room 1 Those girls
have got the pot-plants out of that, and a lot more,
and they've turned the edges of that back yard,
along the fence, into a regular bower ; they Ve got
sweet peas planted, and nasturtiums, and we shall
be in a blaze of glory about the beginning of June.

52 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

Fun to see 'em work in the garden, and the bird
bossing the job in his cage under the cherry-tree.
Have to keep the middle of the yard for the clothes-
line, but six days in the week it's a lawn, and I
go over it with a mower myself. March, there ain't
anything like a home, is there 1 Dear little cot of
your own, heigh ? I tell you, March, when I get to
pushing that mower round, and the colonel is smok-
ing his cigar in the gallery, and those girls are
pottering over the flowers, one of these soft evenings
after dinner, I feel like a human being. Yes, I do.
I struck it rich when I concluded to take my meals
.at the widow's. For eight dollars a week I get good
board, refined society, and all the advantages of a
Christian home. By the way, you've never had
much talk with Miss Woodburn, have you, March ? "

" Not so much as with Miss Woodburn's father."

"Well, he is rather apt to scoop the conversation.
I must draw his fire, sometime, when you and
Mrs. March are around, and get you a chance with
Miss "\Voodburn."

" I should like that better, I believe," said March.

" Well, I shouldn't wonder if you did. Curious,
but Miss Woodburn isn't at all your idea of a
Southern girl. She 's got lots of go ; she 's never
idle a minute ; she keeps the old gentleman in first-
class shape, and she don't believe a bit in the slavery
solution of the labour problem ; says she 's glad it 's
gone, and if it 's anything like the effects of it, she 's
glad it went before her time. No, sir, she 's as full
of snap as the liveliest kind of a Northern girl

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 53

None of that sunny Southern languor you read
about."

"I suppose the typical Southerner, like the
typical anything else, is pretty difficult to find," said
March. " But perhaps Miss Woodburn represents
the new South. The modern conditions must be
producing a modern type."

" Well, that 's what she and the colonel both say.
They say there ain't anything left of that Walter
Scott dignity and chivalry in the rising generation ;
takes too much time. You ought to see her sketch
the old-school, high-and-mighty manners, as they sur-
vive among some of the antiques in Charlottesburg.
If that thing could be put upon the stage it would
be a killing success. Makes the old gentleman laugh
in spite of himself. But he 's as proud of her as
Punch, anyway. Why don't you and Mrs. March
come round oftener ? Look here ! How would it
do to have a little excursion, somewhere, after the
spring fairly gets in its work ? "

"Reporters present ? "

" No, no ! Nothing of that kind ; perfectly sin-
cere and disinterested enjoyment."

" Oh, a few handbills to be scattered around :
'Buy Every Other Week,1 'Look out for the next
number of Every Oilier Week,' 'Every Other Week at
all the news-stands.' Well, I '11 talk it over with
Mrs. March. I suppose there 's no great hurry."

March told his wife of the idyllic mood in which
he had left Fulkerson at the widow's door, and sha

said he must be in love.

2C

54 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

" "Why, of course ! I wonder I didn't think of that.
But Fulkerson is such an impartial admirer of the
whole sex that you can't think of his liking one
more than another. I don't know that he showed
any unjust partiality, though, in his talk of 'those
girls,' as he called them. And I always rather
fancied that Mrs. Mandel — he's done so much for
her, you know ; and she is such a well-balanced, well-
preserved person, and so lady-like and correct :

"Fulkerson had the word for her: academic.
She 's everything that instruction and discipline can
make of a woman ; but I shouldn't think they could
make enough of her to be in love with."

"Well, I don't know. The academic has its
charm. There are moods in which I could imagine
myself in love with an academic person. That
regularity of line ; that reasoned strictness of
contour ; that neatness of pose ; that slightly con-
ventional but harmonious grouping of the emotions
and morals — you can see how it would have its
charm, the Wedgwood in human nature 1 I wonder
where Mrs. Mandel keeps her urn and her willow."

" I should think she might have use for them in
that family, poor thing ! " said Mrs. March.

" Ah, that reminds me," said her husband, " that
we had another talk with the old gentleman, this
afternoon, about Fulkerson's literary, artistic, and
advertising orgie, and it 's postponed till October."

" The later the better, I should think," said Mrs.
March, who did not really think about it at all, but
whom the date fixed for it caused to think of the

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 55

intervening time. " We have got to consider what
we will do about the summer, before long, Basil."

" Oh, not yet, not yet," he pleaded, with that
man's willingness to abide in the present, which is
so trying to a woman. " It 's only the end of April."

" It will be the end of June before we know.
And these people wanting the Boston house another
year complicates it. We can't spend the summer
there, as Ave planned."

" They oughtn't to have offered us an increased
rent ; they have taken an advantage of us. "

" I don't know that it matters," said Mrs. March.
" I had decided not to go there."

" Had you 1 This is a surprise."

" Everything is a surprise to you, Basil, when it
happens."

" True ; I keep the world fresh, that way."

" It wouldn't have been any change to go from
one city to another for the summer. We might as
well have stayed in New York."

" Yes, I wish we had stayed," said March, idly
humouring a conception of the accomplished fact.
" Mrs. Green would have let us have the gim-
crackery very cheap for the summer months ; and
we could have made all sorts of nice little excursions
and trips off, and been twice as well as if we had
spent the summer away."

" Nonsense ! You know we couldn't spend the
summer in New York."

" I know I could."

"What stuff 1 You couldn't manage."

56 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

"Oh yes, I could. I could take my meals at
Fulkerson's widow's ; or at Maroni's, with poor old
Lindau : he 's got to dining there again. Or, I could
keep house, and he could dine with me here."

There was a teasing look in March's eyes, and he
broke into a laugh, at the firmness with which his
wife said, " I think if there is to be any house-keep-
ing, I will stay, too ; and help to look after it. I
would try not intrude upon you and your guest."

" Oh, we should be only too glad to have you join
us," said March, playing with fire.

" Very well, then, I wish you would take him off
to Maroni's, the next time he comes to dine here ! "
cried his wife.

The experiment of making March's old friend free
of his house had not given her all the pleasure that
so kind a thing ought to have afforded so good a
woman. She received Lindau at first with robust
benevolence, and the high resolve not to let any of
his little peculiarities alienate her from a sense of
his claim upon her sympathy and gratitude, not only
as a man who had been so generously fond of her
husband in his youth, but a hero who had suffered
for her country. Her theory was that his mutilation
must not be ignored, but must be kept in mind as
a monument of his sacrifice, and she fortified Bella
with this conception, so that the child bravely sat
next his maimed arm at table and helped him to
dishes he could not reach, and cut up his meat for
him. As for Mrs. March herself, the thought of his
mutilation made her a little faint; she was not

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 57

without a bewildered resentment of its presence as a
sort of oppression. She did not like his drinking so
much of March's beer, either ; it was no harm, but
it was somehow unworthy, out of character with a
hero of the war. But what she really could not
reconcile herself to was the violence of Lindau's
sentiments concerning the whole political and social
fabric. She did not feel sure that he should be
allowed to say such things before the children, who
had been nurtured in the faith of Bunker Hill and
Appomattox, as the beginning and the end of all
possible progress in human rights. As a woman
she was naturally an aristocrat, but as an American
she was theoretically a democrat ; and it astounded,
it alarmed her, to hear American democracy
denounced as a shuffling evasion. She had never
cared much for the United States Senate, but she
doubted if she ought to sit by when it was railed at
as a rich man's club. It shocked her to be told that
the rich and poor were not equal before the law in a
country where justice must be paid for at every step
in fees and costs, or where a poor man must go to
war in his own person, and a rich man might hire
some one to go in his. Mrs. March felt that this
rebellious mind in Lindau really somehow outlawed
him from sympathy, and retroactively undid his past
suffering for the country : she had always particu-
larly valued that provision of the law, because in
forecasting all the possible mischances that might
befall her own son, she had been comforted by the
thought that if there ever was another war, and Tom
3*

58 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

were drafted, his father could buy him a substitute.
Compared with such blasphemy as this, Lindau's
declaration that there was not equality of opportunity
in America, and that fully one-half the people were
debarred their right to the pursuit of happiness by
the hopeless conditions of their lives, was flattering
praise. She could not listen to such things in silence,
though, and it did not help matters when Lindau
met her arguments with facts and reasons which she
felt she was merely not sufficiently instructed to
combat, and he was not quite gentlemanly to urge.
"I am afraid for the effect on the children," she said
to her husband. " Such perfectly distorted ideas —
Tom will be ruined by them."

" Oh, let Tom find out Avhere they 're false,"
said March. "It will be good exercise for his
faculties of research. At any rate, those things are
getting said nowadays ; he '11 have to hear them
sooner or later."

" Had he better hear them at home ? " demanded
his wife.

"Why, you know, as you're here to refute them,
Isabel," he teased, " perhaps it 's the best place. But
don't mind poor old Lindau, my dear. He says him-
self that his parg is worse than his pidte, you know."

"Ah, it's too late now to mind him," she sighed.
In a moment of rash good feeling, or perhaps an
exalted conception of duty, she had herself proposed
that Lindau should come every week and read
German with Tom ; and it had become a question
first how they could get him to take pay for it, and

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 59

then how they could get him to stop it. Mrs. March
never ceased to wonder at herself for having brought
this about, for she had warned her husband against
making any engagement with Lindau which would
bring him regularly to the house : the Germans
stuck so, and were so unscrupulously dependent.
Yet, the deed being done, she would not ignore the
duty of hospitality, and it was always she who made
the old man stay to their Sunday evening tea when
he lingered near the hour, reading Schiller and
Heine and Uhland with the boy, in the clean shirt
with which he observed the day ; Lindau's linen
was not to be trusted during the week. She now
concluded a season of mournful reflection by saying,
"He will get you into trouble, somehow, Basil."

"Well, I don't know how, exactly. I regard
Lindau as a political economist of an unusual type ;
but I shall not let him array me against the consti-
tuted authorities. Short of that, I think I am safe."

"Well, be careful, Basil; be careful. You know
you are so rash."

" I suppose I may continue to pity him ? He is
such a poor, lonely old fellow. Are you really sorry
he 's come into our lives; my dear ? "

"Xo, no; not that. I feel as you do about it;
but. I wish I felt easier about him — sure, that is,
that we 're not doing wrong to let him keep on talk-
ing so." .

" I suspect we couldn't help it," March returned
lightly. " It 's one of what Lindau calls his 'brincibles'
to say what he thinks."

II.

THE Marches had no longer the gross appetite for
novelty which urges youth to a surfeit of strange
scenes, experiences, ideas; and makes travel, with
all its annoyances and fatigues, an inexhaustible
delight. But there is no doubt that the chief
pleasure of their life in New York Avas from its
quality of foreignness : the flavour of olives, which,
once tasted, can never be forgotten. The olives
may not be of the first excellence ; they may be a
little stale, and small and poor, to begin with, but
they are still olives, and the fond palate craves them.
The sort which grew in New York, on lower Sixth
Avenue and in the region of Jefferson Market and
on the soft exposures south of Washington Square,
were none the less acceptable because they were of
the commonest Italian variety.

The Marches spent a good deal of time and money
in a grocery of that nationality, where they found
all the patriotic comestibles and potables, and re-
newed, their faded Italian with the friendly family
in charge. Italian table-wholes formed the adventure
of the week, on the day when Mrs. March let her
domestics go out, and went herself to dine abroad

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 61

with her husband and children ; and they became
adept in the restaurants where they were served,
and which they varied almost from dinner to dinner.
The perfect decorum of these places, and their im-
munity from offence in any, emboldened the Marches
to experiment in Spanish restaurants, where red
pepper and beans insisted in every dinner, and
where once they chanced upon a night of ollapodrida,
with such appeals to March's memory of a boyish
ambition to taste the dish that he became poetic and
then pensive over its cabbage and carrots, peas and
bacon. For a rare combination of international
motives they prized most the table-d'hote of a French
lady, who had taken a Spanish husband in a second
marriage, and had a Cuban negro for her cook, with
a cross-eyed Alsatian for waiter, and a slim young
South American for cashier. March held that some-
thing of the catholic character of these relations
expressed itself in the generous and tolerant variety
of the dinner, which was singularly abundant for
fifty cents, without wine. At one very neat French
place he got a dinner at the same price with wine,
but it was not so abundant ; and March inquired
in fruitless speculation why the table-d'Mte of the
Italians, a notoriously frugal and abstemious people,
should be usually more than you wanted at seventy-
five cents and a dollar, and that of the French rather
less for half a dollar. He could not see that the
frequenters were greatly different at the different
places; they were mostly Americans, of subdued
manners and conjecturably subdued fortunes, with

62 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

here and there a table full of foreigners. There was
no noise and not much smoking anywhere ; March
liked going to that neat French place because there
Madame sat enthroned and high behind a comptoir at
one side of the room, and everybody saluted her in
going out. It was there that a gentle-looking
young couple used to dine, in whom the Marches
became effectlessly interested, because they thought
they looked like that when they were }roung. The
wife had an aesthetic dress, and defined her pretty
head by Avearing her back-hair pulled up very tight
under her bonnet; the husband had dreamy eyes
set wide apart under a pure forehead. " They are
artists, Aiigust, I think," March suggested to the
waiter, when he had vainly asked about them.
" Oh, hartis, cedenly," August consented ; but
Heaven knows whether they were, or what they
were : March never learned.

This immunity from acquaintance, this touch-and-
go qualit}7 in their New York sojourn, this almost
loss of individuality at times, after the intense
identification of their Boston life, was a relief, though
Mrs. March had her misgivings, and questioned
whether it were not perhaps too relaxing to the
moral fibre. March refused to explore his con-
science ; he allowed that it might be so ; but he
said he liked now and then to feel his personality in
that state of solution. They went and sat a good
deal in the softening evenings among the infants
and dotards of Latin extraction in Washington
Square, safe from all who ever knew them, and

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. Dd

enjoyed the advancing season, which thickened the
foliage of the trees and flattered out of sight the
churchwarden's gothic of the University Building.
The infants were sometimes cross, and cried in their
weary mothers' or little sisters' arms ; but they did
not disturb the dotards, who slept, some with their
heads fallen forward, and some with their heads
fallen back; March arbitrarily distinguished those
with the drooping faces as tipsy and ashamed to
confront the public. The small Italian children
raced up and down the asphalte paths, playing
American games of tag and hide-and-whoop ; larger
boys passed ball, in training for potential champion-
ships. The Marches sat and mused, or quarrelled
fitfully about where they should spend the summer,
like sparrows, he once said, till the electric lights
began to show distinctly among the leaves, and they
looked round and found the infants and dotards
gone and the benches filled with lovers. That was
the signal for the Marches to go home. He said that
the spectacle of so much courtship as the eye might
take in there at a glance was not, perhaps, oppres-
sive, but the thought that at the same hour the same
thing was going on all over the country, wherever
two young fools could get together, was more than
he could bear ; he did not deny that it was natural,
and, in a measure, authorised, but he declared that
it was hackneyed ; and the fact that it must go on
for ever, as long as the race lasted, made him tired.

At home, generally, they found that the children
had not missed them, and were perfectly safe. It

64 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

was one of the advantages of a flat that they could
leave the children there whenever they liked with-
out anxiety. They liked better staying there than
wandering about in the evening with their parents,
whose excursions seemed to them somewhat aimless,
and their pleasures insipid. They studied, or read,
or looked out of the window at the street sights ;
and their mother always came back to them with a
pang for their lonesomeness. Bella knew some little
girls in the house, but in a ceremonious way ; Tom
had formed no friendships among the boys at school
such as he had left in Boston ; as nearly as he could
explain, the New York fellows carried canes at an
age when they would have had them broken for
them by the other boys at Boston : and they were
both sissy ish and fast. It was probably prejudice ;
he never could say exactly what their demerits were,
and neither he nor Bella was apparently so homesick
as they pretended, though they answered inquirers,
the one that New York was a hole, and the other
that it was horrid, and that all they lived for was to
get back to Boston. In the meantime they were
thrown much upon each other for society, which
March said was well for both of them ; he did not
mind their cultivating a little gloom and the sense
of a common wrong ; it made them better com-
rades, and it was providing them with amusing
reminiscences for the future. They really en-
joyed Bohemianising in that harmless way : though
Tom had his doubts of its respectability; he was
very punctilious about his sister, and went round

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 65

from his own school every day to fetch her home
from hers. The whole family went to the theatre a
good deal, and enjoyed themselves together in their
desultory explorations of the city.

They lived near Greenwich Village, and March
liked strolling through its quaintness toAvard the
water-side on a Sunday, when a hereditary Sabbata-
rianism kept his wife at home ; he made her observe
that it even kept her at home from church. He
found a lingering quality of pure Americanism in
the region, and he said the very bells called to wor-
ship in a nasal tone. He liked the streets of small
brick houses, with here and there one painted red,
and the mortar lines picked out in white, and with
now and then a fine wooden portal of fluted pillars
and a bowed transom. The rear of the tenement-
houses showed him the picturesqueness of clothes-
lines fluttering far aloft, as in Florence ; and the
new apartment-houses, breaking the old sky-line
with their towering stories, implied a life as alien to
the American manner as anything in continental
Europe. In fact, foreign faces and foreign tongues
prevailed in Greenwich Village, but no longer
German or even Irish tongues or faces. The eyes
and ear-rings of Italians twinkled in and out of the
alleyways and basements, and they seemed to
abound even in the streets, where long ranks of
trucks drawn up in Sunday rest along the curb-
stones suggested the presence of a race of sturdier
strength than theirs. March liked the swarthy,
strange visages ; he found nothing menacing for

66 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

the future in them ; for wickedness he had to satisfy
himself as he could with the sneering, insolent,
clean-shaven mug of some rare American of the
b'hoy type, now almost as extinct in Xew York as
the dodo or the volunteer fireman. When he had
found his way, among the ash-barrels and the groups
of decently dressed church-goers, to the docks, he
experienced a sufficient excitement in the recent
arrival of a French steamer, whose sheds were
thronged with hacks and express-wagons, and in a
tacit inquiry into the emotions of the passengers,
fresh from the cleanliness of Paris, and now driving
up through the filth of those streets.

Some of the streets were filthier than others ;
there was at least a choice ; there were boxes and
barrels of kitchen offal on all the sidewalks, but not
everywhere manure-heaps, and in some places the
stench was mixed with the more savoury smell of
cooking. One Sunday morning, before the winter
was quite gone, the sight of the frozen refuse melt-
ing in heaps, and particularly the loathsome edges
of the rotting ice near the gutters, with the strata
of waste-paper and straw litter, and egg-shells and
orange-peel, potato-skins and cigar-stumps, made
him unhappy. He gave a whimsical shrug for the
squalor of the neighbouring houses, and said to him-
self rather than the boy who was with him : " It 's
curious, isn't it, how fond the poor people are of
these unpleasant thoroughfares ? You always find
them living in the worst streets."

" The burden of all the wrong in the world comes

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 67

on the poor," said the boy. " Every sort of fraud
and swindling hurts them the worst. The city
wastes the money it 's paid to clean the streets with,
and the poor have to suffer, for they can't afford to
pay twice, like the rich."

March stopped short. " Hallo, Tom ! Is that
your wisdom ? "

" It 's what Mr. Lindau says," answered the boy
doggedly, as if not pleased to have his ideas mocked
at, even if they Avere second-hand.

" And you didn't tell him that the poor lived in
dirty streets because they liked them, and were too-
lazy and worthless to have them cleaned ? "

" No ; I didn't."

" I 'm surprised. What do you think of Lindau,
generally speaking, Tom ? "

" Well, sir, I don't like the way he talks about
some things. I don't suppose this country is per-
fect, but I think it 's about the best there is, and it
don't do any good to look at its drawbacks all the
time."

" Sound, my son," said March, putting his hand
on the boy's shoulder and beginning to walk on.
" Well ? "

" Well, then, he says that it isn't the public frauds
only that the poor have to pay for, but they have to
pay for all the vices of the rich ; that when a specu-
lator fails, or a bank cashier defaults, or a firm
suspends, or hard times come, it's the poor who
have to give up necessaries where the rich give up
luxuries."

68 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

" Well, well ! And then ?"

"Well, then I think the crank comes in, in
Mr. Lindau. He says there 's no need of failures
or frauds or hard times. It's ridiculous. There
always have been and there always will be. But
if you tell him that, it seems to make him perfectly
furious."

March repeated the substance of this talk to his
wife. " I 'm glad to know that Tom can see through
such ravings. He has lots of good common-sense."

It was the afternoon of the same Sunday, and
they were sauntering up Fifth Avenue, and admiring
the wide old double houses at the lower end ; at one
corner they got a distinct pleasure out of the gnarled
elbows that a pollarded wistaria leaned upon the top
of a garden wall — for its convenience in looking into
the street, he said. The line of these comfortable
dwellings, once so fashionable, was continually broken
by the facades of shops ; and March professed him-
self vulgarised by a want of style in the people they
met in their walk to Twenty-third Street.

" Take me somewhere to meet my fellow-exclusives,
Isabel," he demanded. " I pine for the society of
my peers."

He hailed a passing omnibus, and made his wife
get on the roof with him. "Think of our doing
such a thing in Boston ! " she sighed, with a little
shiver of satisfaction in her immunity from recogni-
tion and comment.

"You wouldn't be afraid to do it in London or
Paris?"

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 69

"No; we should be strangers there — just as we
are in New York. I wonder how long one could be
a stranger here."

" Oh, indefinitely, in our way of living. The
place is really vast, so much larger than it used to
seem, and so heterogeneous."

When they got down very far uptown, and began
to walk back by Madison Avenue, they found
themselves in a different population from that they
dwelt among ; not heterogeneous at all ; very homo-
geneous, and almost purely American ; the only
qualification was American Hebrew. Such a well-
dressed, well-satisfied, well-fed looking crowd poured
down the broad sidewalks before the handsome,,
stupid houses that March could easily pretend he
had got among his fellow-plutocrats at last. Still
he expressed his doubts whether this Sunday after-
noon parade, which seemed to be a thing of custom,
represented the best form among the young people
of that region ; he wished he knew ; he blamed
himself for becoming of- a fastidious conjecture ; he
could not deny the fashion and the richness and the
indigeneity of the spectacle ; the promenaders looked
New Yorky ; they were the sort of people whom
you would know for New Yorkers elsewhere, so
well equipped and so perfectly kept at all points.
Their silk hats shone, and their boots ; their f rocka
had the right distension behind, and their bonnets;
perfect poise and distinction.

The Marches talked of these and other facts of

their appearance, and curiously questioned whether
2 D

70 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

this were the best that a great material civilisation
could come to; it looked a little dull. The men's
faces were shrewd and alert, and yet they looked
dull; the women's were pretty and knowing, and
yet dull. It was, probably, the holiday expression
of the vast, prosperous commercial class, with
unlimited money, and no ideals that money could
not realise ; fashion and comfort were all that they
desired to compass, and the culture that furnishes
showily, that decorates and that tells ; the culture,
say, of plays and operas, rather than books.

Perhaps the observers did the promenaders in-
justice; they might not have been as common-
minded as they looked. "But/' March said, "I
understand now why the poor people don't come up
here and live in this clean, handsome, respectable
quarter of the town ; they would be bored to death.
On the whole, I think I should prefer Mott Street
myself."

In other walks the Marches tried to find some of
the streets they had wandered through the first day
of their wedding journey in New York, so long ago.
They could not make sure of them ; but once they
ran down to the Battery, and easily made sure of
that, though not in its old aspect. They recalled
the hot morning, when they sauntered over the
trodden weed that covered the sickly grass-plots
there, and sentimentalised the sweltering paupers
who had crept out of the squalid tenements about
for a breath of air after a sleepless night. Now the
paupers were gone, and where the old mansions

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 71

that had fallen to their use once stood, there towered
aloft and abroad those heights and masses of many-
storied brick-work for which architecture has yet
no proper form and aesthetics no name. The trees
and shrubs, all in their young spring green, blew
briskly over the guarded turf in the south wind that
came up over the water ; and in the well-paved alleys
the ghosts of eighteenth- century fashion might have
met each other in their old haunts, and exchanged
stately congratulations upon its vastly bettered con-
dition, and perhaps puzzled a little over the colossal
lady on Bedloe's Island, with her lifted torch, and
still more over the curving tracks and chalet-stations
of the Elevated road. It is an outlook of unrivalled
beauty across the bay, that smokes and flashes with
the innumerable stacks and sails of commerce, to the
hills beyond, where the moving forest of masts halts
at the shore, and roots itself in the groves of the
many-villaged uplands. The Marches paid the
charming prospect a willing duty, and rejoiced in it
as generously as if it had been their own. Perhaps
it was, they decided. He said people owned more
things in common than they were apt to think ; and
they drew the consolations of proprietorship from the
excellent management of Castle Garden, which they
penetrated for a moment's glimpse of the huge
rotunda, where the emigrants first set foot on our
continent. It warmed their hearts, so easily moved
to any cheap sympathy, to see the friendly care the
nation took of these humble guests ; they found it
even pathetic to hear the proper authority calling

72 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

out the names of such as had kin or acquaintance
waiting there to meet them. No one appeared
troubled or anxious ; the officials had a conscien-
tious civility ; the government seemed to manage
their welcome as well as a private company or cor-
poration could have done. In fact, it was after the
simple strangers had left the government care that
March feared their woes might begin ; and he would
have liked the government to follow each of them
to his home, wherever he meant to fix it within our
borders. He made note of the looks of the licensed
runners and touters waiting for the immigrants out-
side the government premises ; he intended to work
them up into a dramatic effect in some sketch, but
they remained mere material in his memorandum-
book, together with some quaint old houses on the
Sixth Avenue road, which he had noticed on the way
down. On the way up, these were superseded in
his regard by some hip-roof structures on the
Ninth Avenue, which he thought more Dutch-
looking. The perspectives of the cross-streets to-
ward the river were very lively, with their turmoil
of trucks and cars and carts and hacks and foot-
passengers, ending in the chimneys and masts of
shipping, and final gleams of dancing water. At a
very noisy corner, clangorous with some sort of iron-
working, he made his wife enjoy with him the quiet
sarcasm of an inn that called itself the Homelike
Hotel, and he speculated at fantastic length on the
gentle associations of one who should have passed
his youth under its roof.

III.

FIRST and last, the Marches did a good deal of
travel on the Elevated roads, which, he said, gave
you such glimpses of material aspects in the city as
some violent invasion of others' lives might afford
in human nature. Once, when the impulse of
adventure was very strong in them, they went quite
the length of the West side lines, and saw the city
pushing its way by irregular advances into the
country. Some spaces, probably held by the owners
for that rise in value which the industry of others
providentially gives to the land of the wise and
good, it left vacant comparatively far down the road,
and built up others at remoter points. It was a
world of lofty apartment-houses beyond the Park,
springing up in isolated blocks, with stretches of
invaded rusticity between, and here and there an
old country-seat standing dusty in its budding vines
with the ground before it in rocky upheaval for city
foundations. But wherever it went or wherever it
paused, New York gave its peculiar stamp ; and the
adventurers were amused to find One Hundred and
Twenty-fifth Street inchoately like Twenty-third
Street and Fourteenth Street in its shops and
VOL. II.— 4

74 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

shoppers. The butchers' shops and milliners' shops
on the avenue might as well have been at Tenth as
at One Hundredth Street.

The adventurers were not often so adventurous.
Tliev recognised that in their willingness to let

•/ o o ^

their fancy range for them, and to let speculation do
the work of inquiry, they were no longer young.
Their point of view was singularly unchanged, and
their impressions of New York remained the same
that they had been fifteen years before : huge, noisy,
ugly, kindly, it seemed to them now as it seemed
then. The main difference was that they saw it
more now as a life, and then they only regarded it
as a spectacle ; and March could not release himself
from a sense of complicity with it, no matter what
whimsical, or alien, or critical attitude he took. A
sense of the striving and the suffering deeply
possessed him ; and this grew the more intense as
he gained some knowledge of the forces at work —
forces of pity, of destruction, of perdition, of sal-
vation. He wandered about on Sunday not only
through the streets, but into this tabernacle and
that, as the spirit moved him, and listened to those
who dealt with Christianity as a system of economics
as well as a religion. He could not get his wife to
go with him ; she listened to his report of what he
heard, and trembled ; it all seemed fantastic and
menacing. She lamented the literary peace, the
intellectual refinement of the life they had left
behind them ; and he owned it was very pretty, but
he said it was not life — it was death-in-life. She

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 75

liked to hear him talk in that strain of virtuous self-
denunciation, but she asked him, " Which of your
prophets are you going to follow?" and he answered,
"All — all! And a fresh one every Sunday." And
so they got their laugh out of it at last, but with
some sadness at heart, and with a dim consciousness
that they had got their laugh out of too many things
in life.

What really occupied and compassed his activities,
in spite of his strenuous reveries of work beyond it,
was his editorship. On its social side it had not
fulfilled all the expectations which Fulkerson's
radiant sketch of its duties and relations had caused
him to form of it. Most of the contributions came
from a distance ; even the articles written in New
York reached him through the post, and so far from
having his valuable time, as they called it, consumed
in interviews with his collaborators, he rarely saw
any of them. The boy on the stairs, who was to
fence him from importunate visitors, led a life of
luxurious disoccupation, and whistled almost unin-
terruptedly. When any one came, March found
himself embarrassed and a little anxious. The
visitors were usually young men, terribly respectful,
but cherishing, as he imagined, ideals and opinions
chasmally different from his ; and he felt in their
presence something like an anachronism, something
like a fraud. He tried to freshen up his sympathies
on them, to get at what they were really thinking and
feeling, and it was some time before he could under-
stand that they were not really thinking and feeling

T6 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

anything of their own concerning their art, but were
necessarily, in their quality of young, inexperienced
men, mere acceptants of older men's thoughts and
feelings, whether they were tremendously conserva-
tive, as some were, or tremendously progressive, as
others were. Certain of them called themselves
realists, certain romanticists ; but none of them
seemed to know what realism was, or what romanti-
cism ; they apparently supposed the difference a
difference of material. March had imagined himself
taking home to lunch or dinner the aspirants for
editorial favour whom he liked, whether he liked
their work or not ; but this was not an easy matter.
Those who were at all interesting seemed to have
engagements and preoccupations ; after two or three
experiments with the bashfuller sort — those who
had come up to the metropolis with manuscripts in
their hands, in the good old literary tradition — he
wondered whether he was otherwise like them when
he was young like them. He could not flatter himself
that he was not ; and yet he had a hope that the
world had grown worse since his time, which his
wife encouraged.

Mrs. March was not eager to pursue the hospitali-
ties which she had at first imagined essential to the
literary prosperity of Every Other Week ; her family
sufficed her ; she would willingly have seen no one
out of it but the strangers at the weekly table-d'Jtote
dinner, or the audiences at the theatres. March's
devotion to his work made him reluctant to delegate
it to any one ; and as the summer advanced, and

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 77

the question of where to go grew more vexed, he
showed a man's base willingness to shirk it for him-
self by not going anywhere. He asked his wife why
she did not go somewhere with the children, and he
joined her in a search for non-malarial regions on
the map when she consented to entertain this notion.
But when it came to the point she would not go;
he offered to go with her then, and then she would
not let him. She said she knew he would be
anxious about his work ; he protested that he could
take it with him to any distance within a few hours,
but she would not be persuaded. She would rather
he stayed; the effect would be better with Mr.
Fulkerson; they could make excursions, and they
could all get off a week or two to the sea-shore near
Boston — the only real sea-shore — in August. The
excursions were practically confined to a single day
at Coney Island ; and once they got as far as Boston
on the way to the sea-shore near Boston ; that is,
Mrs. March and the children went ; an editorial exi-
gency kept March at the last moment. The Boston
streets seemed very queer and clean and empty to
the children, and the buildings little ; in the horse-
cars the Boston faces seemed to arraign their mother
with a down-drawn severity that made her feel very
guilty. She knew that this was merely the Puri-
tan mask, the cast of a dead civilisation, which
people of very amiable and tolerant minds were
doomed to wear, and she sighed to think that less
than a year of the heterogeneous gaiety of New
York should have made her afraid of it. The sky

78 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

seemed cold and grey; the east wind, which she had
always thought so delicious in summer, cut her to
the heart. She took her children up to the South End,
and in the pretty square where they used to live
they stood before their alienated home, and looked
up at its close-shuttered windows. The tenants
must have been away, but Mrs. March had not the
courage to ring and make sure, though she had
always promised herself that she would go all over
the house when she came back, and see how they
had used it ; she could pretend a desire for some-
thing she wished to take away. She knew she
could not bear it now ; and the children did not
seem eager. She did not push on to the seaside ;
it would be forlorn there without their father ; she
was glad to go back to him in the immense, friendly
homelessness of New York, and hold him answer-
able for the change, in her heart or her mind, which
made its shapeless tumult a refuge and a consola-
tion.

She found that he had been giving the cook a
holiday, and dining about hither and thither with
Fulkerson. Once he had dined with him at the
widow's (as they always called Mrs. Leighton), and
then had spent the evening there, and smoked with
Fulkerson and Colonel Woodburn on the gallery
overlooking the back yard. They were all spending
the summer in New York. The widow had got so
good an offer for her house at St. Barnaby for the
summer that she could not refuse it ; and the
"\Voodburns found New York a watering-place of

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 79

exemplary coolness after the burning Augusts and
Septembers of Charlottesburg.

" You can stand it well enough in our climate, sir,"
the colonel explained, " till you come to the
September heat, that sometimes runs well into
October ; and then you begin to lose your temper,
sir. It 's never quite so hot as it is in New York
at times, but it's hot longer, sir." He alleged, as
if something of the sort were necessary, the example
of a famous South-western editor who spent all his
summers in a New York hotel as the most luxurious
retreat on the continent, consulting the weather
forecasts, and running off on torrid days to the
mountains or the sea, and then hurrying back at the
promise of cooler weather. The colonel had not
found it necessary to do this yet ; and he had been
reluctant to leave town, where he was working up
a branch of the inquiry which had so long occupied
him, in the libraries, and studying the great problem
of labour and poverty as it continually presented
itself to him in the streets. He said that he talked
with all sorts of people, whom he found monstrously
civil, if you took them in the right way ; and he
went everywhere in the city without fear and
apparently without danger. March could not find
out that he had ridden his hobby into the homes of
want which he visited, or had proposed their enslave-
ment to the inmates as a short and simple solution
of the great question of their lives ; he appeared to
have contented himself with the collection of facts
for the persuasion of the cultivated classes. It

80 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

seemed to March a confirmation of this impression
that the colonel should address his deductions from
these facts so unsparingly to him ; he listened with
a respectful patience, for which Fulkerson after-
ward personally thanked him. Fulkerson said it was
not often the colonel found such a good listener;
generally nobody listened but Mrs. Leighton, who
thought his ideas were shocking, but honoured him
for holding them so conscientiously. Fulkerson was
glad that March, as the literary department, had
treated the old gentleman so well, because there was
an open feud between him and the art department.
Beaton was outrageously rude, Fulkerson must say ;
though as for that, the old colonel seemed quite able
to take care of himself, and gave Beaton an un-
qualified contempt in return for his unmannerlmess.
The worst of it was, it distressed the old lady so ;
she admired Beaton as much as she respected the
colonel, and she admired Beaton, Fulkerson thought,
rather more than Miss Leighton did ; he asked
March if he had noticed them together. March had
noticed them, but without any very definite im-
pression except that Beaton seemed to give the
whole evening to the girl. Afterward he recollected
that he had fancied her rather harassed by his
devotion, and it was this point that he wished to
present for his wife's opinion.

" Girls often put on that air, she said. " It 's one
of their ways of teasing. But then, if the man was
really very much in love, and she was only enough in
love to be uncertain of herself, she might very well

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 81

seem troubled. It would be a very serious question.
Girls often don't know what to do in such a case."

"Yes," said March, "I've often been glad that I
was not a girl, on that account. But I guess that
on general principles Beaton is not more in love
than she is. I couldn't imagine that young man
being more in love with anybody, unless it was
himself. He might be more in love with himself
than any one else was."

" Well, he doesn't interest me a great deal, and I
can't say Miss Leighton does either. I think she
can take care of herself. She has herself very well
in hand."

"Why so censorious?" pleaded March. "I
don't defend her for having herself in hand; but
is it a fault 1 "

Mrs. March did not say. She asked, " And how
does Mr. Fulkerson's affair get on ? "

"His affair1? You really think it is one? Well,
I 've fancied so myself, and I 've had an idea of
some time asking him ; Fulkerson strikes one as
truly domesticable, conjugable at heart ; but I Ve
waited for him to speak."

" I should think so."

" Yes. He 's never opened on the subject yet.
Do you know, I think Fulkerson has his moments
of delicacy."

" Moments ! He 's all delicacy in regard to
women."

" Well, perhaps so. There is nothing in them to
rouse his advertising instincts."
4*

IV.

THE Dryfoos family stayed in town till August
Then the father went West again to look after his
interests; and Mrs. Mandel took the two girls to
one of the great hotels in Saratoga. Fulkerson said
that he had never seen anything like Saratoga for
fashion, and Mrs. Mandel remembered that in her
own young ladyhood this was so for at least some
weeks of the year. She had been too far withdrawn
from fashion since her marriage to know whether it
was still so or not. In this, as in so many other
matters, the Dryfoos family helplessly relied upon
Fulkerson, in spite of Dryfoos's angry determination
that he should not run the family, and in spite of
Christine's doubt of his omniscience ; if he did not
know everything, she was aware that he knew more
than herself. She thought that they had a right to
have him go with them to Saratoga, or at least go
up and engage their rooms beforehand ; but Fulker
son did not offer to do either, and she did not quite
see her way to commanding his services. The
young ladies took what Mela called splendid dresses
with them ; they sat in the park of tall, slim trees
which the hotel's quadrangle enclosed, and listened

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 83

to the music in the morning, or on the long piazza
in the afternoon and looked at the driving in the
street, or in the vast parlours by night, where all
the other ladies were, and they felt that they were
of the best there. But they knew nobody, and Mrs.
Mandel was so particular that Mela was prevented
from continuing the acquaintance even of the few
young men who danced with her at the Saturday-
night hops. They drove about, but they went to
places without knowing why, except that the carriage
man took them, and they had all the privileges of a
proud exclusivism without desiring them. Once a
motherly matron seemed to perceive their isolation,
and made overtures to them, but then desisted, as
if repelled by Christine's suspicion, or by Mela's too
instant and hilarious good-fellowship, which ex-
pressed itself in hoarse laughter and in a flow of talk
full of topical and syntactical freedom. From time
to time she offered to bet Christine that if Mr.
Fulkersori was only there they would have a good
time ; she wondered what they were all doing in
New York, where she wished herself ; she rallied
her sister about Beaton, and asked her why she did
not write and tell him to come up there.

Mela knew that Christine had expected Beaton to
follow them. Some banter had passed between
them to this effect ; he said he should take them in
on his way home to Syracuse. Christine would not
have hesitated to write to him and remind him of
his promise; but she had learned to distrust her
literature with Beaton since he had laughed at the

84 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

spelling in a scrap of writing which dropped out of
her music-book one night. She believed that he
would not have laughed if he had known it was
hers ; but she felt that she could hide better the
deficiencies which were not committed to paper;
she could manage with him in talking ; she was too
ignorant of her ignorance to recognise the mistakes
she made then. Through her own passion she
perceived that she had some kind of fascination for
him ; she was graceful, and she thought it must be
that ; she did not understand that there was a kind
of beauty in her small, irregular features that
piqued and haunted his artistic sense, and a look in
her black eyes beyond her intelligence and inten-
tion. Once he sketched her as they sat together,
and flattered the portrait without getting what he
wanted in it ; he said he must try her some time in
colour ; and he said things which, when she made
Mela repeat them, could only mean that he admired
her more than anybody else. He came fitfully, but
he came often, and she rested content in a girl's in-
definiteness concerning the affair ; if her thought
went beyond love-making to marriage, she believed
that she could have him if she wanted him. Her
father's money counted in this; she divined that
Beaton was poor ; but that made no difference ; she
would have enough for both ; the money would
have counted as an irresistible attraction if there
had been no other.

The affair had gone on in spite of the sidelong
looks of restless dislike with which Dryfoos regarded

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 85

it ; but now when Beaton did not come to Saratoga
it necessarily dropped, and Christine's content with
it. She bore the trial as long as she could; she
used pride and resentment against it; but at last
she could not bear it, and with Mela's help she
wrote a letter, bantering Beaton on his stay in
New York, and playfully boasting of Saratoga. It
seemed to them both that it was a very bright
letter, and would be sure to bring him ; they would
have had no scruple about sending it but for the
doubt they had whether they had got some of the
words right. Mela offered to bet Christine anything
she dared that they were right, and she said, Send
it anyway ; it was no difference if they were wrong.
But Christine could not endure to think of that
laugh of Beaton's, and there • remained only Mrs.
Mandel as authority on the spelling. Christine
dreaded her authority on other points, but Mela
said she knew she would not interfere, and she
undertook to get round her. Mrs. Mandel pro-
nounced the spelling bad, and the taste worse;
she forbade them to send the letter; and Mela
failed to get round her, though she threatened, if
Mrs. Mandel would not tell her how to spell the
wrong words, that she would send the letter as it
was; then Mrs. Mandel said that if Mr. Beaton
appeared in Saratoga she would instantly take
them both home. When Mela reported this re-
sult, Christine accused her of having mismanaged
the whole business; she quarrelled with her, and
they called each other names. Christine declared

86 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

that she would not stay in Saratoga, and that if
Mrs. Mandel did not go back to New York with her
she should go alone. They returned the first week
in September ; but by that time Beaton had gone to
see his people in Syracuse.

Conrad Dryfoos remained at home with his
mother after his father went West. He had already
taken such a vacation as he had been willing to
allow himself, and had spent it on a charity farm
near the city, where the fathers with whom he
worked among the poor on the East side in the
winter had sent some of their wards for the
summer. It was not possible to keep his recrea-
tion a secret at the office, and Fulkerson found a
pleasure in figuring the jolly time Brother Conrad
must have teaching farm work among those paupers
and potential reprobates. He invented details of
his experience among them, and March could not
always help joining in the laugh at Conrad's
humourless helplessness under Fulkerson's bur-
lesque denunciation of a summer outing spent in
such dissipation.

They had time for a great deal of joking at the
office during the season of leisure which penetrates
in August to the very heart of business, and they
all got on terms of greater intimacy if not greater
friendliness than before. Fulkerson had not had so
long to do with the advertising side of human nature
without developing a vein of cynicism, of no great
depth, perhaps, but broad, and underlying his whole
point of view ; he made light of Beaton's solemnity,

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 87

as he made light of Conrad's 'humanity. The art
editor, with abundant sarcasm, had no more humour
than the publisher, and was an easy prey in the
manager's hands ; but when he had been led on by
Fulkerson's flatteries to make some betrayal of ego-
tism, he brooded over it till he had thought how to
revenge himself in elaborate insult. For Beaton's
talent Fulkerson never lost his admiration ; but his
joke was to encourage him to give himself airs of
being the sole source of the magazine's prosperity.
No bait of this sort was too obvious for Beaton to
swallow ; he could be caught with it as often as Ful-
kerson chose; though he was ordinarily suspicious
as to the motives of people in saying things. With
March he got on no better than at first. He seemed
to be lying in wait for some encroachment of the
literary department on the art department, and he
met it now and then with anticipative reprisal.
After these rebuffs, the editor delivered him over
to the manager, who could turn Beaton's contrary-
mindedness to account by asking the reverse of
what he really wanted done. This was what
Fulkerson said ; the fact was that he did get
on with Beaton; and March contented himself
with musing upon the contradictions of a charac-
ter at once so vain and so offensive, so fickle and
so sullen, so conscious and so simple.

After the first jarring contact with Dryfoos, the
editor ceased to feel the disagreeable fact of the old
man's mastery of the financial situation. None
of the chances which might have made it painful

S8 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

occurred ; the control of the whole affair remained
in Fulkerson's hands ; before he went West again,
Dryfoos had ceased to come about the office, as if,
having once worn off the novelty of the sense of
owning a literary periodical, he was no longer in-
terested in it.

Yet it was a relief, somehow, when he left town,
which he did not do without coming to take a
formal leave of the editor at his office. He seemed
willing to leave March with a better impression
than he had hitherto troubled himself to make ; he
even said some civil things about the magazine, as
if its success pleased him ; and he spoke openly to
March of his hope that his son would finally become
interested in it to the exclusion of the hopes and
purposes which divided them. It seemed to March
that in the old man's warped and toughened heart
he perceived a disappointed love for his son greater
than for his other children ; but this might have
been fancy. Lindau came in with some copy while
Dryfoos was there, and March introduced them.
When Lindau went out, March explained to Dryfoos
that he had lost his hand in the war ; and he told
him something of Lindau's career as he had known
it. Dryfoos appeared greatly pleased that Every
Other Week was giving Lindau work. He said that
he had helped to enlist a good many fellows for the
war, and had paid money to fill up the Moffitt
County quota under the later calls for troops. He
had never been an Abolitionist, but he had joined
the Anti-Nebraska party in '55, and he had voted

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 89

for Fremont and for every Republican President
since then.

At his own house March saw more of Lindau
than of any other contributor, but the old man
seemed to think that he must transact all his busi-
ness with March at his place of business. The
transaction had some peculiarities which perhaps
made this necessary. Lindau always expected to
receive his money when he brought his copy, as an
acknowledgment of the immediate right of the
labourer to his hire ; and he would not take it in a
cheque because he did not approve of banks, and
regarded the whole system of banking as the capi-
talistic manipulation of the people's money. He
would receive his pay only from March's hand,
because he wished to be understood as working for
him, and honestly earning money honestly earned ;
and sometimes March inwardly winced a little at
letting the old man share the increase of capital won
by such speculation as Dryfoos's, but he shook off
the feeling. As the summer advanced, and the
artists and classes that employed Lindau as a model
left town one after another, he gave largely of his
increasing leisure to the people in the office of Every
Other Week. It was pleasant for March to see the
respect with which Conrad Dryfoos always used
him, for the sake of his wound and his grey beard.
There was something delicate and fine in it, and
there was nothing unkindly on Fulkerson's part in
the hostilities which usually passed between him
and Lindau. Fulkerson bore himself reverently at

90 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

times too, but it was not in him to keep that up,
especially when Lindau appeared with more beer
aboard than, as Fulkerson said, he could manage
ship-shape. On these occasions Fulkerson always
tried to start him on the theme of the unduly rich ;
he made himself the champion of monopolies, and
enjoyed the invectives which Lindau heaped upon
him as a slave of capital ; he said that it did him
good.

One day, with the usual show of writhing under
Lindau's scorn, he said, " Well, I understand that
although you despise me now, Lindau —

" I ton't desbise you," the old man broke in, his
nostrils swelling and his eyes naming with excite-
ment, "I bity you."

" Well, it seems to come to the same thing in the
end," said Fulkerson. " What I understand is that
you pity me now as the slave of capital, but you
would pity me a great deal more if I was the master
of it."

" How you mean ? "

" If I was rich."

" That would tebendt," said Lindau, trying to
control himself. "If you hat inheritedt your
money, you might pe innocent ; but if you hat mate
it, efery man that resbectedt himself would haf to
ask how you mate it, and if you hat mate moch,
he would know "

" Hold on ; hold on, now, Lindau ! Ain't that
rather un-American doctrine 1 We're all brought
up, ain't we, to honour the man that made his

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 91

money, and look down — or try to look down ; some-
times it 's difficult — on the fellow that his father left
it to ? "

The old man rose and struck his breast. "On-
Amerigan ! " he roared, and, as he Avent on, his
accent grew more and more uncertain. " What iss
Amerigan 1 Dere iss no Ameriga any more ! You
start here free and brafe, and you glaim for efery
man de righdt to life, liperty, and de bursuit of
habbiness. And where haf you entedt? No man
that vorks vith his handts among you hass the
liperty to bursue his habbiness. He iss the slafe of
some richer man, some gompany, some gorporation,
dat crindts him down to the least he can lif on, and
that rops him of the marchin of his earnings that he
might pe habby on. Oh, you Amerigans, you haf
cot it down goldt, as you say ! You ton't puy foters;
you puy lechislatures and goncressmen ; you puy
gourts; you puy gombetitors; you pay infentors
not to infent ; you atfertise, and the gounting-room
sees dat de etitorial-room toesn't tink."

" Yes, we Ve got a little arrangement of that sort
with March here," said Fulkerson.

" Oh, I am sawry," said the old man contritely,
" I meant noting bersonaL I ton't tink we are all
cuilty or gorrubt, and efen among the rich there are
goodt men. But gabidal " — his passion rose again —
" where you find gabidal, millions of money that a
man hass cot togeder in fife, ten, tventy years, you
findt the smell of tears and ploodt ! Dat iss what I
say. And you cot to loog oudt for yourself when

92 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

you meet a rich man whether you meet an honest
man."

" "Well," said Fulkerson, " I wish I was a subject
of suspicion with you, Lindau. By the way," he
added, " I understand that you think capital was at
the bottom of the veto of that pension of yours."

"What bension? What feto ? " The old man
flamed up again. " No bension of mine was efer
fetoedt. I renounce my bension, begause I would
sgorn to dake money from a gofernment that I ton't
peliefe in any more. Where you hear that story ? "

"Well, I don't know," said Fulkerson, rather
embarrassed. "It's common talk."

" It 's a gommon lie, then ! When the time
gome dat dis iss a free gountry again, then I dalfe a
bension again for my woundts ; but I would sdarfe
before I dake a bension now from a rebublic dat is
bought oap by monobolies, and ron by drusts and
gompanies, and railroadts andt oil gompanies.

" Look out, Lindau," said Fulkerson. " You bite
yourself mit dat dog some day." But when the
old man, with a ferocious gesture of renunciation,
whirled out of the place, he added : " I guess I went
a little too far that time. I touched him on a sore
place ; I didn't mean to ; I heard some talk about
his pension being vetoed from Miss Leighton." He
addressed these exculpations to March's grave face,
and to the pitying deprecation in the eyes of Conrad
Dryfoos, whom Lindau's roaring wrath had sum-
moned to the door. "But I'll make it all right
with him the next time he comes. I didn't know

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 93

he was loaded, or I wouldn't have monkeyed with
him."

" Lindau does himself injustice when he gets to
talking in that way," said March. " I hate to hear
him. He 's as good an American as any of us ; and
it 's only because he has too high an ideal of us "

" Oh, go on ! Eub it in — rub it in ! " cried Ful-
kerson, clutching his hair in suffering, which was
not altogether burlesque. " How did I know he
had renounced his ' bension ' 1 Why didn't you
tell me 1 "

" I didn't know it myself. I only knew that he
had none, and I didn't ask, for I had a notion that
it might be a painful subject."

Fulkerson tried to turn it off lightly. " "Well,
he 's a noble old fellow ; pity he drinks." March
would not smile, and Fulkerson broke out : " Dog
on it ! I '11 make it up to the old fool the next time
he comes. I don't like that dynamite talk of his ;
but any man that 's given his hand to the country has
got mine in his grip for good. Why, March ! You
don't suppose I wanted to hurt his feelings, do you?"

" Why, of course not, Fulkerson."

But they could not get away from a certain
ruefulness for that time, and in the evening Fulker-
son came round to March's to say that he had got
Lindau's address from Conrad, and had looked
him up at his lodgings.

" Well, there isn't so much bric-a-brac there, quite,
as Mrs. Green left you ; but I 've made it all right
with Lindau, as far as I 'm concerned. I told him I

94 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

didn't know when I spoke that way, and I honoured
him for sticking to his { brincibles ' ; / don't believe
in his brincibles ; and we wept on each other's necks
— al least, he did. Dogged if he didn't kiss me
before I knew what he was up to. He said I was
his chenerous yong friendt, and he begged my
barton if he had said anything to wound me. I tell
you it was an affecting scene, March; and rats
enough round in that old barracks where he lives to
fit out a first-class case of delirium tremens. What
does he stay there for ? He 's not obliged to ? "

Lindau's reasons, as March repeated them, affected
Fulkerson as deliciously comical ; but after that he
confined his pleasantries at the office to Beaton and
Conrad Dryfoos, or, as he said, he spent the rest of
the summer in keeping Lindau smoothed up.

It is doubtful if Lindau altogether liked this as
well. Perhaps he missed the occasions Fulkerson
used to give him of bursting out against the mil-
lionaires ; and he could not well go on denouncing as
the slafe of gabidal a man who had behaved to him
as Fulkerson had done, though Fulkerson's servile
relations to capital had been in nowise changed by
his nople gonduct.

Their relations continued to Avear this irksome
character of mutual forbearance ; and when Dry-
foos returned in October and Fulkerson revived the
question of that dinner in celebration of the success
of Every Other Week, he carried his complaisance to
an extreme that alarmed March for the consequences.

V.

" You see," Fulkerson explained, " I find that the
old man has got an idea of his own about that
banquet, and I guess there 's some sense in it. He
wants to have a preliminary little dinner, where we
can talk the thing up first — half a dozen of us ; and
he wants to give us the dinner at his house. Well,
that Js no harm. I don't believe the old man ever
gave a dinner, and he 'd like to show off a little ;
there 's a good deal of human nature in the old man,
after all. He thought of you, of course, and Colonel
"Woodburn, and Beaton, and me at the foot of the
table ; and Conrad ; and I suggested Kendricks :
he 's such a nice little chap ; and the old man him-
self brought up the idea of Lindau. He said you
told him something about him, and he asked why
couldn't we have him, too; and I jumped at it."

" Have Lindau to dinner 1 " asked March.

" Certainly ; why not 1 Father Dryfoos has a
notion of paying the old fellow a compliment for
what he done for the country. There won't be any
trouble about it. You can sit alongside of him, and
cut up his meat for him, and help him to things "

" Yes, but it won't do, Fulkerson ! I don't be-

96 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

lieve Lindau ever had on a dress-coat in his life,
and I don't believe his 'brincibles' would let him
wear one."

"Well, neither had Dryfoos, for the matter of
that. He's as high-principled as old Pan-Electric
himself, when it comes to a dress-coat," said Ful-
kerson. " We 're all going to go in business dress ;
the old man stipulated for that."

"It isn't the dress-coat alone," March resumed.
" Lindau and Dryfoos wouldn't get on. You know
they 're opposite poles in everything. You mustn't
do it. Dryfoos will be sure to say something to
outrage Lindau's ' brincibles,' and there '11 be an ex-
plosion. It's all well enough for Dryfoos to feel
grateful to Lindau, and his wish to honour him
does him credit ; but to have Lindau to dinner
isn't the way. At the best, the old fellow would
be very unhappy in such a house ; he would have a
bad conscience ; and I should be sorry to have him
feel that he 'd been recreant to his ' brincibles ' ;
they 're about all he 's got, and whatever we think
of them, we're bound to respect his fidelity to
them." March warmed toward Lindau in taking
this view of him. "I should feel ashamed if I
didn't protest against his being put in a false posi-
tion. After all, he 's my old friend, and I shouldn't
like to have him do himself injustice if he is a
crank."

" Of course," said Fulkerson, with some trouble in
his face. "I appreciate your feeling. But there
ain't any danger," he added buoyantly. " Anyhow,

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 97

you spoke too late, as the Irishman said to the
chicken when he swallowed him in a fresh egg.
I 've asked Lindau, and he 's accepted with blayzure;
that 's what he says."

March made no other comment than a shrug.

"You'll see," Fulkerson continued, "it'll go off
all right. I '11 engage to make it, and I won't hold
anybody else responsible."

Jn the course of his married life March had
learned not to censure the irretrievable; but this
was just what his wife had not learned ; and she
poured out so much astonishment at what Fulker-
son had done, and so much disapproval, that March
began to palliate the situation a little.

"After all, it isn't a question of life and death;
and, if it were, I don't see how it's to be helped
now."

" Oh, it 's not to be helped now. But I am sur-
prised at Mr. Fulkerson."

"Well, Fulkerson has his moments of being
merely human, too."

Mrs. March would not deign a direct defence of
her favourite. " Well, I 'm glad there are not to be
ladies."

"I don't know. Dryfoos thought of having
ladies, but it seems your infallible Fulkerson over-
ruled him. Their presence might have kept Lindau
and our host in bounds."

It had become part of the Marches' conjugal joke
for him to pretend that she could allow nothing
wrong in Fulkerson, and he now laughed with a
VOL. II.— 5

98 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

mocking air of having expected it when she said :
" Well, then, if Mr. Fulkerson says he will see that
it all comes out right, I suppose you must trust his
tact. I wouldn't trust yours, Basil. The first wrong
step was taken when Mr. Lindau was asked to help
on the magazine."

" Well, it was your infallible Fulkerson that took
the step, or at least suggested it. I 'm happy to say
/had totally forgotten my early friend."

Mrs. March was daunted and silenced for a
moment. Then she said : " Oh, pshaw ! You
know well enough he did it to please you."

" I 'm very glad he didn't do it to please yout
Isabel," said her husband, with affected seriousness.
"Though perhaps he did."

He began to look at the humorous aspect of the
affair, which it certainly had, and to comment on
the singular incongruities which Every Other Week
was destined to involve at every moment of its
career. " I wonder if I 'm mistaken in supposing
that no other periodical was ever like it. Perhaps
all periodicals are like it. But I don't believe
there 's another publication in New York that could
bring together, in honour of itself, a fraternity and
equality crank like poor old Lindau, and a belated
sociological crank like Woodburn, and a truculent
speculator like old Dryfoos, and a humanitarian
dreamer like young Dryfoos, and a sentimentalist
like me, and a nondescript like Beaton, and a pure
advertising essence like Fulkerson, and a society
spirit like Kendricks. If we could only allow on»

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 99

another to talk uninterruptedly all the time, the
dinner would be the greatest success in the world,
and we should come home full of the highest mutual
respect. But I suspect we can't manage that — even
your infallible Fulkerson couldn't work it — and I 'm
afraid that there'll be some listening that'll spoil
the pleasure of the time."

March was so well pleased with this view of the
case that he suggested the idea involved to Fulker-
son. Fulkerson was too good a fellow not to laugh
at another man's joke, but he laughed a little rue-
fully, and he seemed worn with more than one kind
of care in the interval that passed between the
present time and the night of the dinner.

Dryfoos necessarily depended upon him for
advice concerning the scope and nature of the
dinner, but he received the advice suspiciously, and
contested points of obvious propriety with per-
tinacious stupidity. Fulkerson said that when it
came to the point he would rather have had the
thing, as he called it, at Delmonico's or some other
restaurant ; but when he found that Dryfoos's pride
was bound up in having it at his own house, he gave
way to him. Dryfoos also wanted his woman-cook
to prepare the dinner, but Fulkerson persuaded him
that this would not do; he must have it from a
caterer. Then Dryfoos wanted his maids to wait at
table, but Fulkerson convinced him that this would
be incongruous at a man's dinner. It was decided
that the dinner should be sent in from Frescobaldi's,
and Dryfoos went with Fulkerson to discuss it with
2F

100 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

the caterer. He insisted upon having everything
explained to him, and the reason for having it, and
not something else in its place; and he treated
Fulkerson and Frescobaldi as if they were in league
to impose upon him. There were moments when
Fulkerson saw the varnish of professional politeness
cracking on the Neapolitan's volcanic surface, and
caught a glimpse of the lava fires of the cook's
nature beneath ; he trembled for Dryfoos, who was
walking rough-shod over him in the security of an
American who had known how to make his money,
and must know how to spend it ; but he got him
safely away at last, and gave Frescobaldi a wink of
sympathy for his shrug of exhaustion as they turned
to leave him.

It was at first a relief and then an anxiety with
Fulkerson that Lindau did not come about after
accepting the invitation to dinner, until he appeared
at Dryfoos's house, prompt to the hour. There was,
to be sure, nothing to bring him ; but Fulkerson
was uneasily aware that Dryfoos expected to meet
him at the office, and perhaps receive some verbid
acknowledgment of the honour done him. Dryfoos,
he could see, thought he was doing all his invited
guests a favour ; and while he stood in a certain awe
of them as people of much greater social experience
than himself, regarded them with a kind of con-
tempt, as people who were going to have a better
dinner at his house than they could ever afford to
have at their own. He had finally not spared ex-
pense upon it; after pushing Frescobaldi to tho

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 101

point of eruption with his misgivings and suspicions
at the first interview, he had gone to him a second
time alone, and told him not to let the money stand
between him and anything he would like to do. In
the absence of Frescobaldi's fellow-conspirator he
restored himself in the caterer's esteem by adding
whatever he suggested ; and Fulkerson, after trem-
bling for the old man's niggardliness, was now afraid
of a fantastic profusion in the feast. Dryfoos had
reduced the scale of the banquet as regarded the
number of guests, but a confusing remembrance of
what Fulkerson had wished to do remained with
him in part, and up to the day of the dinner he
dropped in at Frescobaldi's and ordered more dishes
and more of them. He impressed the Italian as an
American original of a novel kind ; and when he
asked Fulkerson how Dryfoos had made his money,
and learned that it was primarily in natural gas, he
made note of some of his eccentric tastes as pecu-
liarities that were to be caressed in any future
natural-gas millionaire who might fall into his
hands. He did not begrudge the time he had to
give in explaining to Dryfoos the relation of the
different wines to the different dishes; Dryfoos
was apt to substitute a costlier wine where he
could for a cheaper one, and he gave Frescobaldi
carte blanche for the decoration of the table with
pieces of artistic confectionery. Among these the
caterer designed one for a surprise to his patron
and a delicate recognition of the source of his
wealth, which he found Dryfoos very willing to

102 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

talk about, when he intimated that he knew what
it was.

Dryfoos left it to Fulkerson to invite the guests,
and he found ready acceptance of his politeness from
Kendricks, who rightly regarded the dinner as a
part of the Every Other Week business, and was too
sweet and kind-hearted, anyway, not to seem very
glad to come. March was a matter of course ; but
in Colonel Woodburn Fulkerson encountered a re-
luctance which embarrassed him the more because
he was conscious of having, for motives of his own,
rather strained a point in suggesting the colonel to
Dryfoos as a fit subject for invitation. There had
been only one of the colonel's articles printed as
yet, and though it had made a sensation in its way,
and started the talk about that number, still it did
not fairly constitute him a member of the staff, or
even entitle him to recognition as a regular con-
tributor. Fulkerson felt so sure of pleasing him
with Dryfoos's message that he delivered it in full
family council at the widow's. His daughter re-
ceived it with all the enthusiasm that Fulkerson had
hoped for, but the colonel said stiffly, " I have not
the pleasure of knowing Mr. Dryfoos." Miss Wood-
burn appeared ready to fall upon him at this, but
controlled herself, as if aware that filial authority
had its limits, and pressed her lips together without
saying anything.

' Yes, I know," Fulkerson admitted. " But it
isn't a usual case. Mr. Dryfoos don't go in much
for the conventionalities; I reckon he don't know

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 103

much about 'em, come to boil it down; and he
hoped" — here Fulkerson felt the necessity of in-
venting a little — " that you would excuse any want
of ceremony ; it 's to be such an informal affair, any-
way ; we 're all going in business dress, and there
ain't going to be any ladies. He 'd have come
himself to ask you, but he 's a kind of a bashful old
fellow. It 's all right, Colonel Woodburn."

" I take it that it is, sir," said the colonel cour-
teously, but with unabated state, " coming from you.
But in these matters we have no right to burden
our friends with our decisions."

" Of course, of course," said Fulkerson, feeling
that he had been delicately told to mind his own
business.

" I understand," the colonel went on, " the relation
that Mr. Dryfoos bears to the periodical in which
you have done me the hono' to print my papah, but
this is a question of passing the bounds of a purely
business connection, and of eating the salt of a man
whom you do not definitely know to be a gentle-
man."

" Mah goodness ! " his daughter broke in. "If
you bah your own salt with his money "

"It is supposed that I earn his money before I
buy my salt with it," returned her father severely.
" And in these times, when money is got in heaps,
through the natural decay of our nefarious com-
mercialism, it behooves a gentleman to be scrupulous
that the hospitality offered him is not the profusion
of a thief with his booty. I don't say that Mr.

104 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

Dryfoos's good-fortune is not honest. I simply say
that I know nothing about it, and that I should
prefer to know something before I sat down at his
board."

" You 're all right, colonel," said Fulkerson, " and
so is Mr. Dryfoos. I give you my word that there
are no flies on his personal integrity, if that's what
you mean. He 's hard, and he 'd push an advantage,
but I don't believe he would take an unfair one.
He 's speculated and made money every time, but I
never heard of his wrecking a railroad or belonging
to any swindling company or any grinding monopoly.
He does chance it in stocks, but he 's always played
on the square, if you call stocks gambling."

" May I think this over till morning 1 " asked the
colonel.

" Oh, certainly, certainly," said Fulkerson eagerly.
"I don't know as there's any hurry."

Miss Woodburn found a chance to murmur to
him before he went : " He '11 come. And Ah 'm so
much oblahged, Mr. Fulkerson. Ah jost know it 's
all you' doing, and it will give papa a chance to toak
to some new people, and get away from us evahlastin'
women for once."

" I don't see why any one should want to do that,"
said Fulkerson, with grateful gallantry. "But I '11
be dogged," he said to March when he told him
about this odd experience, " if I ever expected to
find Colonel Woodburn on old Lindau's ground.
He did come round handsomely this morning at
breakfast and apologised for taking time to think

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 105

the invitation over before he accepted. ' You under-
stand,' he says, ' that if it had been to the table of
some friend not so prosperous as Mr. Dryfoos —
your friend Mr. March, for instance — it would have
been sufficient to know that he was your friend.
But in these days it is a duty that a gentleman
owes himself to consider whether he wishes to know
a rich man or not. The chances of making money
disreputably are so great that the chances are against
a man who has made money if he 's made a great
deal of it.'"

March listened with a face of ironical insinuation.
" That was very good ; and he seems to have had a
good deal of confidence in your patience and in your
sense of his importance to the occasion "

" No, no," Fulkerson protested, " there 's none of
that kind of thing about the colonel. I told him to
take time to think it over ; he 's the simplest-hearted
old fellow in the world."

"I should say so. After all, he didn't give any
reason he had for accepting. But perhaps the young
lady had the reason."

" Pshaw, March ! " said Fulkerson.
5*

VI.

So far as the Dryfoos family was concerned, the
dinner might as well have been given at Frescobaldi's
rooms. None of the ladies appeared. Mrs. Dryfoos
was glad to escape to her own chamber, where she
sat before an autumnal fire, shaking her head and
talking to herself at times, with the foreboding of
evil which old women like her make part of their
religion. The girls stood just out of sight at the
head of the stairs, and disputed which guest it was
at each arrival ; Mrs. Mandel had gone to her room
to write letters, after beseeching them not to stand
there. When Kendricks came, Christine gave Mela
a little pinch, equivalent to a little mocking shriek ;
for, on the ground of his long talk with Mela at
Mrs. Horn's, in the absence of any other admirer,
they based a superstition of his interest in her;
when Beaton came, Mela returned the pinch, but
awkwardly, so that it hurt, and then Christine
involuntarily struck her.

Frescobaldi's men were in possession everywhere :
they had turned the cook out of her kitchen and the
waitress out of her pantry ; the reluctant Irishman
at the door was supplemented by a vivid Italian,

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 107

who spoke French with the guests, and said, " Bien,
Monsieur" and " Toute suite" and " Mercif " to all,
as he took their hats and coats, and effused a hospi-
tality that needed no language but the gleam of his
eyes and teeth and the play of his eloquent hands.
From his professional dress-coat, lustrous with the
grease spotted on it at former dinners and parties,
they passed to the frocks of the elder and younger
Dryfoos in the drawing-room, which assumed infor-
mality for the affair, but did not put their wearers
wholly at their ease. The father's coat was of black
broadcloth, and he wore it unbuttoned ; the skirts
were long, and the sleeves came down to his knuckles ;
he shook hands with his guests, and the same dry-
ness seemed to be in his palm and throat, as he
huskily asked each to take a chair. Conrad's coat
was of modern texture and cut, and was buttoned
about him as if it concealed a bad conscience
within its lapels; he met March with his entreat-
ing smile, and he seemed no more capable of
coping with the situation than his father. They
both waited for Fulkerson, who went about and did
his best to keep life in the party during the half-
hour that passed before they sat down at dinner.
Beaton stood gloomily aloof, as if waiting to be
approached on the right basis before yielding an
inch of his ground; Colonel Woodburn, awaiting
the moment when he could sally out on his hobby,
kept himself intrenched within the dignity of a
gentleman, and examined askance the figure of old
Lindau as he stared about the room, with his fine

108 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

head up, and his empty sleeve dangling over his
wrist. March felt obliged to him for wearing a new
coat in the midst of that hostile luxury, and he was
glad to see Dryfoos make up to him and begin to
talk with him, as if he wished to show him particular
respect, though it might have been because he was
less afraid of him than of the others. He heard
Lindau saying, " Boat, the name is Choarman ? "
and Dryfoos beginning to explain his Pennsylvania
Dutch origin, and he suffered himself, with a sigh
of relief, to fall into talk with Kendricks, who was
always pleasant ; he was willing to talk about some-
thing besides himself, and had no opinions that he
was not ready to hold in abeyance for the time being
out of kindness to others. In that group of impas-
sioned individualities, March felt him a refuge and
comfort— with his harmless dilettante intention of
some day writing a novel, and his belief that he was
meantime collecting material for it.

Fulkerson, while breaking the ice for the whole
company, was mainly engaged in keeping Colonel
Woodburn thawed out. He took Kendricks away
from March and presented him to the Colonel as a
person Avho, like himself, was looking into social con-
ditions; he put one hand on Kendricks' shoulder,
and one on the colonel's, and made some flattering
joke, apparently at the expense of the young fellow,
and then left them. March heard Kendricks pro-
test in vain, and the colonel say gravely : " I do not
wonder, sir, that these things interest you. They
constitute a problem which society must solve or

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 109

which will dissolve society," and he knew from that
formula, which the colonel had once used with him,
that he was laying out a road, for the exhibition of
the hobby's paces later.

Fulkerson came back to March, who had turned
toward Conrad Dryfoos, and said, " If we don't get
this thing going pretty soon, it'll be the death of
me," and "just then Frescobakli's butler came in and
announced to Dryfoos that dinner was served. The
old man looked toward Fulkerson with a troubled
glance, as if lie did not know what to do ; he made
a gesture to touch Lindau's elbow. Fulkerson called
out, "Here's Colonel Woodburn, Mr. Dryfoos," as
if Dryfoos were looking for him ; and he set the
example of what he was to do by taking Lindau's
arm himself. "Mr. Lindau is going to sit at my
end of the table, alongside of March. Stand not
upon the order of your going, gentlemen, but fall in
at once." He contrived to get Dryfoos and the
colonel before him, and he let March follow with
Kendricks. Conrad came last with Beaton, who
had been turning over the music at the piano, and
chafing inwardly at the whole affair. At the table
Colonel Woodburn was placed on Dryfoos's right,
and March on his left. March sat on Fulkerson's
right, with Lindau next him ; and the young men
occupied the other seats.

" Put you next to March, Mr. Lindau," said Ful-
kerson, " so you can begin to put Apollinaris in his
champagne-glass at the right moment ; you know his
little weakness of old; sorry to say it 's grown on him,"

110 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

March laughed with kindly acquiescence in Ful-
kerson's wish to start the gaiety, and Lindau patted
him on the shoulder. " I know hiss veakness. If
he liges a class of vine, it iss begause his loaf ingludes
efen hiss enemy, as Shakespeare galled it."

" Ah, but Shakespeare couldn't have been thinking
of champagne," said Kendricks.

"I suppose, sir," Colonel Woodburn interposed
with lofty courtesy, " champagne could hardly have
been known in his day."

" I suppose not, colonel," returned the younger
man deferentially. " He seemed to think that sack
and sugar might be a fault ; but he didn't mention
champagne."

" Perhaps he felt there was no question about
that," suggested Beaton, who then felt that he had
not done himself justice in the sally.

" I wonder just when champagne did come in,"
said March.

" I know when it ought to come in," said Fulker-
son. " Before the soup ! "

They all laughed, and gave themselves the air of
drinking champagne out of tumblers every day, as
men like to do. Dryfoos listened uneasily ; he did
not quite understand the allusions, though he knew
what Shakespeare was, well enough ; Conrad's face
expressed a gentle deprecation of joking on such a
subject, but he said nothing.

The talk ran on briskly through the dinner. The
young men tossed the ball back and forth; they
made some wild shots, but they kept it going, and

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. \ll

they laughed when they were hit. The wine loosed
Colonel Woodburn's tongue ; he became very com-
panionable with the young fellows ; with the feeling
that a literary dinner ought to have a didactic scope,
he praised Scott and Addison as the only authors fit
to form the minds of gentlemen.

Kendricks agreed with him, but wished to add the
name of Flaubert as a master of style. " Style, you
know," he added, "is the man."

"Very true, sir; you are quite right, sir," the
colonel assented ; he wondered who Flaubert was.

Beaton praised Baudelaire and Maupassant; he
said these were the masters. He recited some lurid
verses from Baudelaire ; Lindau pronounced them a
disgrace to human nature, and gave a passage from
Victor Hugo on Louis Napoleon, with his heavy
German accent, and then he quoted Schiller. " Ach,
boat that iss peaudifool ! Not zo 1 " he demanded
of March.

" Yes, beautiful ; but, of course, you know I think
there 's nobody like Heine ! "

Lindau threw back his great old head and laughed,
showing a want of teeth under his moustache. He
put his hand on March's back. " This poy — he wass
a poy den — wass so gracy to pekin reading Heine that
he gommence with the tictionary bevore he knows
any crammar, and ve bick it out vort by vort togeder."

" He was a pretty cay poy in those days, heigh,
Lindau 1 " asked Fulkerson, burlesquing the old
man's accent, with an impudent wink that made
Lindau himself laugh. " Back in the dark ages, I

112 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

mean, there in Indianapolis. Just how long ago did
you old codgers meet there, anyway 1 " Fulkerson
saw the restiveness in Dryfoos's eye at the purely
literary course the talk had taken ; he had intended
it to lead up that way to business, to Every Other
Week ; but he saw that it was leaving Dryfoos too
far out, and he wished to get it on the personal
ground, where everybody is at home.

" Ledt me zee," mused Lindau. " AVass it in
fifty-nine or zixty, Passil 1 Idt wass a year or dwo
pefore the war proke oudt, anyway."

" Those were exciting times," said Dryfoos, making
his first entry into the general talk. " I went down
to Indianapolis with the first company from our
place, and I saw the red-shirts pouring in every-
where. They had a song —

" Oh, never mind the weather, but git over double trouble,
For we 're bound for the land of Canaan. "

The fellows locked arms and went singin' it up and
down four or five abreast in the moonlight ; crowded
everybody else off the sidewalk. "

" I rememper, I rememper," said Lindau, nodding
his head slowly up and down. "A coodt many off
them nefer gome pack from that landt of Ganaan,
Mr. Dryfoos ? "

" You 're right, Mr. Lindau. But I reckon it was
worth it — the country we 've got now. Here, young
man ! " He caught the arm of the waiter who was
going round with the champagne bottle. " Fill up
Mr. Lindau's glass, there. I want to drink the

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 113

health of those old times with him. Here 's to your
empty sleeve, Mr. Lindau. God bless it ! No
offence to you, Colonel Woodburn," said Dryfoos,
turning to him before he drank.

" Not at all, sir, not at all," said the colonel. " I
will drink with you, if you will permit me."

" We '11 all drink — standing," cried Fulkeroon.
" Help March to get up, somebody ! Fill high the
bowl with Samian Apollinaris for Coonrod ! Now,
then, hurrah for Lindau ! "

They cheered, and hammered on the table with
the butts of their knife-handles. Lindau remained
seated. The tears came into his eyes ; he said, " I
thank you, chendlemen," and hiccoughed.

' I 'd V went into the Avar myself," said Dryfoos,
" but I was raisin' a family of young children, and I
didn't see how I could leave my farm. But I helped
to fill up the quota at every call, and when the
volunteering stopped I went round with the sub-
scription , paper myself ; and we offered as good
bounties as any in the State. My substitute was
killed in one of the last skirmishes — in fact, after
Lee's surrender — and I 've took care of his family,
more or less, ever since."

" By the Avay, March," said Fulkerson, "what sort
of an idea AA^ould it be to have a good war-story —
might be a serial — in the magazine 1 The war has
never fully panned .out in fiction yet. It was used
a good deal just after it was over, and then it was
dropped. I think it 's time to take it up again. I
believe it would be a card."

114 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

It was running in March's mind that Dryfoos had
an old rankling shame in his heart for not having
gone into the war, and that he had often made that
explanation of his course without having ever been
satisfied with it. He felt sorry for him ; the fact
seemed pathetic ; it suggested a dormant nobleness
in the man.

Beaton was saying to Fulkerson, " You might get
a series of sketches by substitutes; the substitutes
haven't been much heard from in the war literature.
How would ' The Autobiography of a Substitute '
do ? You might follow him up to the moment he
was killed in the other man's place, and inquire
whether he had any right to the feelings of a hero
when he was only hired in the place of one. Might
call it ' The Career of a Deputy Hero.'"

" I fancy," said March, " that there was a great
deal of mixed motive in the men who went into the
war as well as in those who kept out of it. We
canonised all that died or suffered in it, but some of
them must have been self-seeking and low-minded,
like men in other vocations." He found himself
saying this in Dryfoos's behalf ; the old man looked
at him gratefully at first, he thought, and then sus-
piciously.

Lindau turned his head toward him and said :
" You are righdt, Passil ; you are righdt. I haf
zeen on the fieldt of pattle the voarst eggsipitions
of human paseness — chelousy, fanity, ecodistic bridte.
I haf zeen men in the face off death itself gofferned
by motif es as low as — as pusiness motif es."

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 115

"Well," said Fulkerson, "it would be a grand
thing for Every Other Week if we could get some of
those ideas worked up into a series. It would make
a lot of talk."

Colonel Woodburn ignored him in saying, "I
think, Major Lindau "

" High brifate ; prefet gorporal," the old man in-
terrupted, in rejection of the title.

Kendricks laughed and said, with a glance of
appreciation at Lindau, " Brevet corporal is good."

Colonel Woodburn frowned a little, and passed
over the joke. " I think Mr. Lindau is right. Such
exhibitions were common to both sides, though if
you gentlemen will pardon me for saying so, I think
they were less frequent on ours. We were fighting
more immediately for existence ; we were fewer than
you were, and we knew it ; we felt more intensely
that if each were not for all, then none was for any."

The colonel's words made their impression. Dry-
foos said with authority, "That is so."

" Colonel Woodburn," Fulkerson called out, " if
you '11 work up those ideas into a short paper — say
three thousand words — I '11 engage to make March
take it."

The colonel went on without replying : " But Mr.
Lindau is right in characterising some of the motives
that led men to the cannon's mouth as no higher
than business motives, and his comparison is the
most forcible that he could have used. I was very
much struck by it"

The hobby was out, the colonel was in the saddle
2G

116 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

with so firm a seat that no effort sufficed to dislodge
him. The dinner went on from course to course
with barbaric profusion, and from time to time Ful-
kerson tried to bring the talk back to Every Other
Week. But perhaps because that was only the
ostensible and not the real object of the dinner,
which was to bring a number of men together
under Dryfoos's roof, and make them the wit-
nesses of his splendour, make them feel the power
of his wealth, Fulkerson's attempts failed. The
colonel showed how commercialism was the poison
at the heart of our national life ; how we began as a
simple, agricultural people, who had fled to these
shores with the instinct, divinely implanted, of build-
ing a State such as the sun never shone upon before ;
how we had conquered the wilderness and the
savage ; how we had flung off, in our struggle with
the mother-country, the trammels of tradition and
precedent, and had settled down, a free nation, to
the practice of the arts of peace ; how the spirit of
commercialism had stolen insidiously upon us, and
the infernal impulse of competition had embroiled
us in a perpetual warfare of interests, developing
the worst passions of our nature, and teaching us to
trick and betray and destroy one another in the
strife for money, till now that impulse had exhausted
itself, and we found competition gone and the whole
economic problem in the hands of monopolies — the
Standard Oil Company, the Sugar Trust, the
Rubber Trust, and what not. And now what was
the next thing ? Affairs could not remain as they

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 117

were ; it was impossible ; and what was the next
thing 1

The company listened for the main part silently.
Dryfoos tried to grasp the idea of commercialism as
the colonel seemed to hold it ; he conceived of it as
something like the dry-goods business on a vast
scale, and he knew he had never been in that. He
did not like to hear competition called infernal ; he
had always supposed it was something sacred ; but
he approved of what Colonel Woodburn said of the
Standard Oil Company; it was all true; the Stan-
dard Oil had squeezed Dryfoos once, and made him
sell it a lot of oil-wells by putting down the price of
oil so low in that region that he lost money on every
barrel he pumped.

All the rest listened silently, except Lindau ; at
every point the colonel made against the present
condition of things he said more and more fiercely,
" You are righdt, you are righdt." His eyes glowed,
his hand played with his knife-hilt. When the
colonel demanded, " And what is the next thing ? "
he threw himself forward, and repeated, " Yes, sir !
What is the next thing ] "

" Natural gas, by thunder ! " shouted Fulkerson.

One of the waiters had profited by Lindau's
posture to lean over him and put down in the
middle of the table a structure in white sugar. It
expressed Frescobaldi's conception of a derrick, and
a touch of nature had been added in the flame of
brandy, which burned luridly up from a small pit in
the centre of the base, and represented the gas in

118 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

combustion as it issued from the ground. Fulkerson
burst into a roar of laughter with the words that
recognised Frescobaldi's personal tribute to Dryfoos.
Everybody rose and peered over at the thing, while
he explained the work of sinking a gas-well, as he
had already explained it to Frescobaldi. In the
midst of his lecture he caught sight of the caterer
himself, where he stood in the pantry doorway,
smiling with an artist's anxiety for the effect of his
masterpiece.

" Come in, come in, Frescobaldi ! We want to
congratulate you," Fulkerson called to him. " Here,
gentlemen ! Here 's Frescobaldi's health."

They all drank ; and Frescobaldi, smiling bril-
liantly and rubbing his hands as he bowed right
and left, permitted himself to say to Dryfoos, " You
are please ; no 1 You like ? "

" First-rate, first-rate ! " said the old man j but
when the Italian had bowed himself out and his
guests had sunk into their seats again, he said dryly
to Fulkerson, " I reckon they didn't have to torpedo
that well, or the derrick wouldn't look quite so nice
and clean."

" Yes," Fulkerson answered, " and that ain't quite
the style — that little wiggly-waggly blue flame —
that the gas acts when you touch off a good vein of
it. This might do for weak-gas ; " and he went on
to explain : " They call it weak-gas when they tap
it two or three hundred feet down ; and anybody
can sink a well in his backyard and get enough gas
to light and heat his house. I remember one fellow

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 119

that had it blazing up from a pipe through a flower-
bed, just like a jet of water from a fountain. My,
my, my ! You fel — you gentlemen — ought to go
out and see that country, all of you. Wish we
could torpedo this well, Mr. Dryfoos, and let 'em
see how it works ! Mind that one you torpedoed
for me 1 You know, when they sink a well," he
went on to the company, " they can't always most
generally sometimes tell whether they're goin' to
get gas or oil or salt-water. Why, when they
first began to bore for salt-water out on the
Kanawha, back about the beginning of the century,
they used to get gas now and then, and then they
considered it a failure ; they called a gas-well a
blower, and give it up in disgust ; the time wasn't
ripe for gas yet. Now they bore away sometimes
till they get half-way to China, and don't seem to
strike anything worth speaking of. Then they put
a dynamite torpedo down in the well and explode
it. They have a little bar of iron that they call a
Go-devil, and they just drop it down on the business
end of the torpedo, and then stand from under, if
you please ! You hear a noise, and in about half a
minute you begin to see one, and it begins to rain oil
and mud and salt-Avater and rocks and pitchforks
and adoptive citizens ; and when it clears up the
derrick 's painted — got a coat on that '11 wear in any
climate. That's what our honoured host meant.
Generally get some visiting lady, when there 's one
round, to drop the Go-devil. But that day we had
to put up with Conrad here. They offered to let

1 20 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

me drop it, birt I declined. I told 'em I hadn't
much practice with Go-devils in the newspaper
syndicate business, and I wasn't very well myself,
anyway. Astonishing," Fulkerson continued, with
the air of relieving his explanation by an anecdote,
" how reckless they get using dynamite when
they 're torpedoing wells. We stopped at one place
where a fellow was handling the cartridges pretty
freely, and Mr. Dryfoos happened to caution him a
little, and that ass came up with one of 'em in his
hand, and began to pound it on the buggy-wheel to
show us how safe it was. I turned green, I was so
scared ; but Mr. Dryfoos kept his colour, and kind
of coaxed the fellow till he quit. You could see he
was the fool kind, that if you tried to stop him he 'd
keep on hammering that cartridge, just to show that
it wouldn't explode, till he blew you into Kingdom
Come. When we got him to go away, Mr. Dryfoos
drove up to his foreman. ' Pay Sheney off, and
discharge him on the spot,' says he. ' He 's too safe
a man to have round ; he knows too much about
dynamite.' I never saw anybody so cool"

Dryfoos modestly dropped his head under Fulker-
son's flattery and, without lifting it, turned his eyes
toward Colonel Woodburn. "I had all sorts of
men to deal with in developing my property out
there, but I had very little trouble with them, gene-
rally speaking."

" Ah, ah ! you foundt the labouring-man reasonable
— dractable — tocile ? " Lindau put in.

"Yes, generally speaking," Dryfoos answered.

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 121

" They mostly knew which side of their bread was
buttered. I did have one little difficulty at one
time. It happened to be when Mr. Fulkerson
was out there. Some of the men tried to form a
union "

" No, no ! " cried Fulkerson. " Let me tell that !
I know you wouldn't do yourself justice, Mr. Dry-
foos, and I want 'em to know how a strike can be
managed, if you take it in time. You see, some of
those fellows got a notion that there ought to be a
union among the working-men to keep up wages, and
dictate to the employers, and Mr. Dryfoos's foreman
was the ringleader in the business. They under-
stood pretty well that as soon as he found it out
that foreman would walk the plank, and so they
watched out till they thought they had Mr. Dry-
foos just where they wanted him — everything on
the keen jump, and every man worth his weight
in diamonds — and then they come to him, and
told him to sign a promise to keep that foreman
to the end of the season, or till he was through
with the work on the Dryfoos and Hendry Addi-
tion, under penalty of having them all knock off.
Mr. Dryfoos smelt a mice, but he couldn't tell where
the mice was ; he saw that they did have him, and
he signed, of course. There wasn't anything really
against the fellow, anyway ; he was a first-rate man,
and he did his duty every time ; only he 'd got some
of those ideas into his head, and they turned it. Mr.
Dryfoos signed, and then he laid low."

March saw Lindau listening with a mounting in-
VOL. II.— 6

122 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

tensity, and heard him murmur in German, " Shame-
ful! shameful!"

Fulkerson went on : " Well, it wasn't long before
they began to show their hand, but Mr. Dryfoos
kept dark. He agreed to everything ; there never
was such an obliging capitalist before ; there wasn't
a thing they asked of him that he didn't do, with
the greatest of pleasure, and all went merry as a
marriage-bell till one morning a whole gang of fresh
men marched into the Dryfoos and Hendry Addition,
under the escort of a dozen Pinkertons with repeating
rifles at half-cock, and about fifty fellows found them-
selves out of a job. You never saw such a mad set"

" Pretty neat," said Kendricks, who looked at the
affair purely from an aesthetic point of view. " Such
a coup as that would tell tremendously in a play."

" That was vile treason," said Lindau in German
to March. " He 's an infamous traitor ! I cannot
stay here. I must go."

He struggled to rise, while March held him by
the coat, and implored him under his voice, "For
Heaven's sake, don't, Lindau ! You owe it to your-
self not to make a scene, if you come here." Some-
thing in it all affected him comically ; he could not
help laughing.

The others were discussing the matter, and seemed
not to have noticed Lindau, who controlled himself
and sighed : " You are right. I must have patience."

Beaton was saying to Dryfoos, " Pity your Pinker-
tons couldn't have given them a few shots before
they left."

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 123

"No, that wasn't necessary," said Dryfoos. "I
succeeded in breaking up the union. I entered into
an agreement with other parties not to employ any
man who would not swear that he was non-union.
If they had attempted violence, of course they could
have been shot. But there was no fear of that.
Those fellows can always be depended upon to cut
each other's throats in the long-run."

"But sometimes," said Colonel Woodburn, who
had been watching throughout for a chance to mount
his hobby again, " they make a good deal of trouble
first. How was it in the great railroad strike of
'77 1 "

"Well, I guess there was a little trouble that
time, colonel," said Fulkerson. "But the men that
undertake to override the laws and paralyse the
industries of a country like this generally get left in
the end."

" Yes, sir, generally ; and up to a certain point,
always. But it 's the exceptional that is apt to
happen, as well as the unexpected. And a little
reflection will convince any gentleman here that
there is always a danger of the exceptional in your
system. The fact is, those fellows have the game in
their own hands already. A strike of the whole
body of the Brotherhood of Engineers alone would
starve out the entire Atlantic seaboard in a week ;
labour insurrection could make head at a dozen given
points, and your government couldn't move a man
over the roads without the help of the engineers."

" That is so," said Kendrick, struck by the

124 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

dramatic character of the conjecture. He imagined
a fiction dealing with the situation as something
already accomplished.

"Why don't some fellow do the Battle of Dorking
act with that thing 1 " said Fulkerson. " It would
be a card."

" Exactly what I was thinking, Mr. Fulkerson,"
said Kendricks.

Fulkerson laughed. " Telepathy — clear case of
mind-transference. Better see March, here, about
it. I'd like to have it in Every Other Week. It
would make talk."

" Perhaps it might set your people to thinking as
well as talking," said the colonel.

"Well, sir," said Dryfoos, setting his lips so
tightly together that his imperial stuck straight out-
ward, " if I had my way, there wouldn't be any
Brotherhood of Engineers, nor any other kind of
labour union in the whole country."

" What ! " shouted Lindau. " You would sobbress
the unionss of the voarking-men ? "

" Yes, I would."

"And what would you do with the • unionss of
the gabidalists — the drosts — and gompines, and
boolss ? Would you dake the righdt from one and
gif it to the odder 1 "

" Yes, sir, I would," said Dryfoos, with a wicked
look at him.

Lindau was about to roar back at him with some
furious protest, but March put his hand on his
shoulder imploringly, and Lindau turned to him to

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 125

say in German, " But it is infamous — infamous !
What kind of man is this 1 Who is he ? He has
the heart of a tyrant."

Colonel Woodburn cut in. " You couldn't do
that, Mr. Dryfoos, under your system. And if you
attempted it, with your conspiracy laws, and that
kind of thing, it might bring the climax sooner than
.you expected. Your commercialised society has
built its house on the sands. It will have to go.
But I should be sorry if it went before its time."

" You are righdt, sir," said Lindau. " It would
be a bity. I hobe it will last till it feelss its rotten-
ness, like Herodt. Boat, when its hour gomes,
when it trops to bieces with the veight off its own
gorrubtion — what then ? "

" It 's not to be supposed that a system of things
like this can drop to pieces of its own accord, like
the old Eepublic of Venice," said the colonel. " But
when the last vestige of commercial society is gone,
then we can begin to build anew ; and we shall build
upon the central idea, not of the false liberty you
now worship, but of responsibility — responsibility.
The enlightened, the moneyed, the cultivated class
shall be responsible to the central authority — em-
peror, duke, president ; the name does not matter —
for the national expense and the national defence,
and it shall be responsible to the working-classes of
all kinds for homes and lands and implements, and
the opportunity to labour at all times. The working-
classes shall be responsible to the leisure class for
the support of its dignity in peace, and shall be

126 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

subject to its command in war. The rich shall
warrant the poor against planless production and the
ruin that now follows, against danger from without
and famine from within, and the poor "

" No, no, no ! " shouted Lindau. " The State shall
do that — the whole beople. The men who voark
shall have and shall eat ; and the men that will not
voark, they shall sdarfe. But no man need sdarfe.
He will go to the State, and the State will see that
he haf voark, and that he haf foodt. All the roadts
and mills and mines and landts shall be the beople's
and be ron by the beople for the beople. There shall
be no rich and no boor ; and there shall not be war
any more, for what bower wouldt dare to addack a
beople bound togeder in a broderhood like that 1 "

"Lion and lamb act," said Fulkerson, not well
knowing, after so much champagne, what words he
was using.

No one noticed him, and Colonel Woodburn said
coldly to Lindau, "You are talking paternalism, sir."

" And you are dalking feutalism ! " retorted the
old man.

The Colonel did not reply. A silence ensued,
which no one broke till Fulkerson said : " Well,
now, look here. If either one of these millenniums
was brought about, by force of arms, or otherwise,
what would become of Every Other Week ? Who
would want March for an editor? How would
Beaton sell his pictures ? Who would print Mr.
Kendricks' little society verses and short stories ?
What would become of Conrad and his srood

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 127

works ? " Those named grinned in support of Ful-
kerson's diversion, but Lindau and the colonel did
not speak ; Dryfoos looked down at his plate, frown-
ing. A waiter came round with cigars, and Fulker-
son took one. " Ah," he said, as he bit off the end,
and leaned over to the emblematic masterpiece, where
the brandy was still feebly flickering, " I wonder if
there '& enough natural gas left to light my cigar."
His effort put the flame out and knocked the derrick
over ; it broke in fragments on the table. Fulkerson
cackled over the ruin : " I wonder if all Moffitt will
look that way after labour and capital have fought it
out together. I hope this ain't ominous of any-
thing personal, Dryfoos ? "

" I '11 take the risk of it," said the old man
harshly.

He rose mechanically, and Fulkerson said to Fres-
cobaldi's man, " You can bring us the coffee in the
library."

The talk did not recover itself there. Lindau
would not sit down ; he refused coffee, and dismissed
himself with a haughty bow to the company ;
Colonel Woodburn shook hands elaborately all
round, when he had smoked his cigar ; the others
followed him. It seemed to March that his own
good-night from Dryfoos was dry and cold.

VII.

MARCH met Fulkerson on the steps of the office
next morning, when he arrived rather later than his
wont. Fulkerson did not show any of the signs
of suffering from the last night's pleasure which
painted themselves in March's face. He flirted his
hand gaily in the air, and said, " How 's your poor
head ? " and broke into a knowing laugh. " You
don't seem to have got up with the lark this
morning. The old gentleman is in there with
Conrad, as bright as a biscuit ; he 's beat you
down. Well, we did have a good time, didn't
we? And old Lindau and the colonel, didn't they
have a good time 1 I don't suppose they ever had
a chance before to give their theories quite so much
air. Oh my, how they did ride over us ! I !m just
going down to see Beaton about the cover of the
Christmas number. I think we ought to try it in
three or four colours, if we are going to observe
the day at all." He was off before March could
pull himself together to ask what Dryfoos wanted
at the office at that hour of the morning ; he
always came in the afternoon on his way uptown.

The fact of his presence renewed the sinister mis-

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 129

givings with which March had parted from him the
night before, but Fulkerson's cheerfulness seemed
to gainsay them ; afterwards March did not know
whether to attribute this mood to the slipperiness
that he was aware of at times in Fulkerson, or to a
cynical amusement he might have felt at leaving
him alone to the old man, who mounted to his room
shortly after March had reached it.

A sort of dumb anger showed itself in his face ;
his jaw was set so firmly that he did not seem able
at once to open it. He asked, without the cere-
monies of greeting, "What does that one-armed
Dutchman do on this book 1 "

11 What does he do ? " March echoed, as people
are apt to do with a question that is mandatory and
offensive.

" Yes, sir, what does he do ? Does he write for
it?"

" I suppose you mean Lindau," said March. He
saw no reason /or refusing to answer Dryfoos's de-
mand, and he decided to ignore its terms. " No, he
doesn't write for it in the usual way. He translates
for it; he examines the foreign magazines, and draws
my attention to anything he thinks of interest. But
I told you about this before "

" I know what you told me, well enough. And I
know what he is. He is a red-mouthed labour-
agitator. He 's one of those foreigners that come
here from places where they 've never had a decent
meal's victuals in their lives, and as soon as they get
their stomachs full, they begin to make trouble be-
6*

130 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

tween our people and their hands. There 's where
the strikes come from, and the unions and the secret
societies. They come here and break our Sabbath,
and teach their atheism. They ought to be hung !
Let 'em go back if they don't like it over here.
They want to ruin the country."

March could not help smiling a little at the words,
which came fast enough now in the hoarse staccato of
Dryfoos's passion. "I don't know whom you mean
by they, generally speaking ; but I had the impres-
sion that poor old Lindau had once done his best to
save the country. I don't always like his way of
talking, but I know that he is one of the truest and
kindest souls in the world ; and he is no more an
atheist than I am. He is my friend, and I can't
allow him to be misunderstood."

" I don't care what he is," Dryfoos broke out, " I
won't have him round. He can't have any more
work from this office. I want you to stop it. I
want you to turn him off."

March was standing at his desk, as he had risen
to receive Dryfoos when he entered. He now sat
down, and began to open his letters.

" Do you hear 1 " the old man roared at him. " I
want you to turn him off."

" Excuse me, Mr. Dryfoos," said March, succeed-
ing in an effort to speak calmly, " I don't know
you, in such a matter as this. My arrangements
as editor of Every Other Week were made with Mr.
Fulkerson. I have always listened to any sugges-
tion he has had to make."

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 131

" I don't care for Mr. Fulkerson ! He has nothing
to do with it," retorted Dryfoos ; but he seemed a
little daunted by March's position.

" He has everything to do with it as far as I am.
concerned," March answered, with a steadiness that
he did not feel. " I know that you are the owner
of the periodical, but I can't receive any suggestion
from you, for the reason that I have given. Nobody
but Mr. Fulkerson has any right to talk with me
about its management."

Dryfoos glared at him for a moment, and de-
manded threateningly : " Then you say you won't
turn that old loafer off? You say that I have
got to keep on paying my money out to buy
beer for a man that would cut my throat if he
got the chance ? "

" I say nothing at all, Mr. Dryfoos," March
answered. The blood came into his face, and he
added : " But I will say that if you speak again of
Mr. Lindau in those terms, one of us must leave this
room. I will not hear you."

Dryfoos looked at him with astonishment ; then
he struck his hat down on his head, and stamped
out of the room and down the stairs ; and a vague
pity came into March's heart that was not altogether
for himself. He might be the greater sufferer in the
end, but he was sorry to have got the better of that
old man for the moment ; and he felt ashamed of
the anger into which Dryfoos's anger had surprised
him. He knew he could not say too much in de-
fence of Lindau's generosity and unselfishness, and

132 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

he had not attempted to defend him as a political
economist. He could not have taken any ground in
relation to Dryfoos but that which he held, and he
felt satisfied that he was right in refusing to receive
instructions or commands from him. Yet somehow
he was not satisfied with the whole affair, and not
merely because his present triumph threatened his
final advantage, but because he felt that in his heat
he had hardly done justice to Dryfoos's rights in the
matter ; it did not quite console him to reflect that
Dryfoos had himself made it impossible. He was
tempted to go home and tell his wife what had
happened, and begin his preparations for the future
at once. But he resisted this weakness and kept
mechanically about his work, opening the letters and
the manuscripts before him with that curious double
action of the mind common in men of vivid imagi-
nations. It was a relief when Conrad Dryfoos,
having apparently waited to make sure that his
father would not return, came up from the counting-
room and looked in on March with a troubled face.

"Mr. March," he began, "I hope father hasn't
been saying anything to you that you can't overlook.
I know he was very much excited, and when he is
excited he is apt to say things that he is sorry for."

The apologetic attitude taken for Dryfoos, so
different from any attitude the peremptory old man
would have conceivably taken for himself, made
March smile. " Oh no. I fancy the boot is on the
other leg. I suspect I've said some things your
father can't overlook, Conrad." He called the

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 133

young man by his Christian name partly to dis-
tinguish him from his father, partly from the in-
fection of Fulkerson's habit, and partly from a kind-
ness for him that seemed naturally to express itself
in that way.

"I know he didn't sleep last night, after you all
went away," Conrad pursued, " and of course that
made him more irritable; and he was tried a good
deal by some of the things that Mr. Lindau said."

"I was tried a good deal myself," said March.
"Lindau ought never to have been there."

" No." Conrad seemed only partially to assent.

"I told Mr. Fulkerson so. I warned him that
Lindau would be apt to break out in some way. It
wasn't just to him, and it wasn't just to your father,
to ask him."

"Mr. Fulkerson had a good motive," Conrad
gently urged. " He did it because he hurt his
feelings that day about the pension."

" Yes, but it was a mistake. He knew that
Lindau was inflexible about his principles, as he calls
them, and that one of his first principles is to
denounce the rich in season and out of season. I
don't remember just what he said last night ; and I
really thought I 'd kept him from breaking out in
the most offensive way. But your father seems very
much incensed."

" Yes, I know," said Conrad.

" Of course, I don't agree with Lindau. I think
there are as many good, kind, just people among the
rich as there are among the poor, and that they are

134 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

as generous and helpful. But Lindau has got hold
of one of those partial truths that hurt worse than
the whole truth, and "

" Partial truth ! " the young man interrupted.
" Didn't the Saviour himself say, ' How hardly shall
they that have riches enter into the kingdom of
God'?"

" Why, bless my soul ! " cried March. " Do you
agree with Lindau 1 "

" I agree with the Lord Jesus Christ," said the
young man solemnly, and a strange light of fanati-
cism, of exaltation, came into his wide blue eyes.
"And I believe he meant the kingdom of heaven
upon this earth, as well as in the skies."

March threw himself back in his chair and looked
at him with a kind of stupetaction, in which his
eye wandered to the doorway, where he saw Fulker-
son standing, it seemed to him a long time, before
he heard him saying, " Hello, hello ! What 's the
row? Conrad pitching into you on old Lindau's
account, too ? "

The young man turned, and after a glance at
Fulkerson's light, smiling face, went out, as if in his
present mood he could not bear the contact of that
persiflant spirit.

March felt himself getting provisionally very
angry again. "Excuse me, Fulkerson, but did you
know when you went out what Mr. Dryfoos wanted
to see me for ? "

"Well, no, I didn't exactly," said Fulkerson,
taking his usual seat on a chair, and looking over

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 135

the back of it at March. " I saw he was on his ear
about something, and I thought I'd better not
monkey with him much. I supposed he was going
to bring you to book about old Lindau, somehow."
Fulkerson broke into a laugh.

March remained serious. "Mr. Dryfoos," he
said, willing to let the simple statement have its own
weight with Fulkerson, and nothing more, " came
in here and ordered me to discharge Lindau from
his employment on the magazine — to turn him off,
as he put it."

" Did he ? " asked Fulkerson, with unbroken cheer-
fulness. " The old man is business, every time. Well,
I suppose you can easily get somebody else to do
Lindau's work for you. This town is just running
over with half -starved linguists. What did you
say ? "

" What did I say ? " March echoed. " Look here,
Fulkerson ; you may regard this as a joke, but /
don't. I 'm not used to being spoken to as if I were
the foreman of a shop, and told to discharge a sen-
sitive and cultivated man like Lindau, as if he
were a drunken mechanic; and if that's your idea
of me "

" Oh, hello, now, March ! You mustn't mind the
old man's way. He don't mean anything by it — he
don't know any better, if you come to that."

" Then / know better," said March. " I refused
to receive any instructions from Mr. Dryfoos, whom,
I don't know in my relations with Every Other Week>
and I referred him to you." '

136 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

" You did ? " Fulkerson whistled. " He owns the
thing ! "

" I don't care who owns the thing," said March.
"My negotiations were with you alone from the
beginning, and I leave this matter with you. What
do you wish done about Lindau ? "

"Oh, better let the old fool drop," said Fulkerson.
" He '11 light on his feet somehow, and it will save
a lot of rumpus."

" And if I decline to let him drop ? "

"Oh, come, now, March; don't do that," Fulker-
son began.

" If I decline to let him drop," March repeated,
" what will you do ? "

" I '11 be dogged if I know what I '11 do," said Ful-
kerson. " I hope you won't take that stand. If the
old man went so far as to speak to you about it, his
mind is made up, and we might as well knock under
first as last."

"And do you mean to say that you would not
stand by me in what I considered my duty — in a
matter of principle 2 "

"Why, of course, March," said Fulkerson coax-
ingly, " I mean to do the right thing. But Dryfoos
owns the magazine "

" He doesn't own me" said March, rising. " He
has made the little mistake of speaking to me as if
he did ; and when" — March put on his hat and took
his overcoat down from its nail — " when you bring
me his apologies, or come to say that, having failed
to make him understand they were necessary, you

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 137

are prepared to stand by me, I will come back to
this desk. Otherwise my resignation is at your
service."

He started toward the door, and Fulkerson inter-
cepted him. " Ah, now, look here, March ! Don't
do that ! Hang it all, don't you see where it leaves
me 1 Now, you just sit down a minute, and talk it

over. I can make you see — I can show you .

Why, confound the old Dutch beer-buzzer ! Twenty
of him wouldn't be worth the trouble he 's makin'.
Let him go, and the old man '11 come round in time.'r

"I don't think we've understood each other
exactly, Mr. Fulkerson," said March, very haughtily.
" Perhaps we never can ; but I '11 leave you to think
it out."

He pushed on, and Fulkerson stood aside to let
him pass, with a dazed look and a mechanical move-
ment. There was something comic in his rueful
bewilderment to March, who was tempted to smile,
but he said to himself that he had as much reason
to be unhappy as Fulkerson, and he did not smile.
His indignation kept him hot in his purpose to
suffer any consequence rather than submit to the
dictation of a man like Dryfoos ; he felt keenly the
degradation of his connection with him, and all his
resentment of Fulkerson's original un candour re-
turned ; at the same time his heart ached with fore-
boding. It was not merely the work in which he
had constantly grown happier that he saw taken
from him ; but he felt the misery of the man who
stakes the security and plenty and peace of home

138 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

upon some cast, and knows that losing will sweep
from him most that most men find sweet and
pleasant in life. He faced the fact, which no good
man can front without terror, that he was risking
the support of his family, and for a point of pride,
of honour, which perhaps he had no right to consider
in view of the possible adversity. He realised, as
every hireling must, no matter how skilfully or
gracefully the tie is contrived for his wearing, that
he belongs to another, whose will is his law. His
indignation was shot with abject impulses to go
back and tell Fulkerson that it was all right, and
that he gave up. To end the anguish of his struggle
he quickened his steps, so that he found he was
reaching home almost at a run.

VIII.

HE must have made more clatter than he sup-
posed with his key at the apartment door, for his
wife had come to let him in when he flung it open.
" Why, Basil," she said, " what 's brought you back ?
Are you sick 1 You 're all pale. Well, no wonder !
This is the last of Mr. Fulkerson's dinners you shall
go to. You 're not strong enough for it, and your
stomach will be all out of order for a week. How
hot you are ! and in a drip of perspiration ! Now
you'll be sick." She took his hat away, which hung
dangling in his hand, and pushed him into a chair
with tender impatience. "What is the matter?
Has anything happened ? "

" Everything has happened," he said, getting his
voice after one or two husky endeavours for it ; and
then he poured out a confused and huddled state-
ment of the case, from which she only got at the
situation by prolonged cross-questioning.

At the end she said, " I knew Lindau would get
you into trouble."

This cut March to the heart. " Isabel ! " he cried
reproachfully.

" Oh, I know," she retorted, and the tears began

140 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

to come. " I don't wonder you didn't want to say
much to me about that dinner at breakfast. I noticed
it ; but I thought you were just dull, and so I didn't
insist. I wish I had, now. If you had told me what
Lindau had said, I should have known what would
have come of it, and I could have advised you "

" Would you have advised me," March demanded
curiously, " to submit to bullying like that, and
meekly consent to commit an act of cruelty against
a man who had once been such a friend to me 1 "

" It was an unlucky day when you met him. I
suppose we shall have to go. And just when we
had got used to New York, and begun to like it.
I don't know where we shall go now ; Boston isn't
like home any more ; and we couldn't live on two
thousand there ; I should be ashamed to try. I 'm
sure I don't know where we can live on it. I sup-
pose in some country village, where there are no
schools, or anything for the children. I don't know
what they'll say when we tell them, poor things."

Every word was a stab in March's heart, so weakly
tender to his own; his wife's tears, after so much
experience of the comparative lightness of the griefs
that weep themselves out in women, always seemed
wrung from his own soul ; if his children suffered in
the least through him, he felt like a murderer. It
was far worse than he could have imagined, the way
his wife took the affair, though he had imagined
certain words, or perhaps only looks, from her that
were bad enough. He had allowed for trouble,
but trouble on his account : a sympathy that might

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 141

burden and embarrass him ; but lie had not dreamt
of this merely domestic, this petty, this sordid view
of their potential calamity, which left him wholly
out of the question, and embraced only what was
most crushing and desolating in the prospect. He
could not bear it. He caught up his hat again, ajid
with some hope that his wife would try to keep him,
rushed out of the house. He wandered aimlessly
about, thinking the same exhausting thoughts over
and over, till he found himself horribly hungry ;
then he went into a restaurant for his lunch, and
when he paid, he tried to imagine how he should
feel if that were really his last dollar.

He went home toward the middle of the afternoon,
basely hoping that Fulkerson had sent him some
conciliatory message, or perhaps was waiting there
for him to talk it over ; March was quite willing to
talk it over now. But it was his wife who again met
him at the door, though it seemed another woman
than the one he had left weeping in the morning.

" I told the children," she said, in smiling ex-
planation of his absence from lunch, " that perhaps
you were detained by business. I didn't know but
you had gone back to the office."

" Did you think I would go back there, Isabel ? "
asked March, with a haggard look. " Well, if you
say so, I will go back, and do what Dryfoos ordered
me to do. I 'm sufficiently cowed between him and
you, I can assure you."

" Nonsense," she said. " I approve of everything
you did. But sit down, now, and don't keep walk-

142 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

ing that way, and let me see if I understand it per-
fectly. Of course I had to have my say out."

She made him go all over his talk with Dryfoos
again, and report his own language precisely. From
time to time, as she got his points, she said, " That
was splendid," " Good enough for him ! " And " Oh,
I 'm so glad you said that to him ! " At the end she
said, " Well, now, let 's look at it from his point of
view. Let 's be perfectly just to him before we take
another step forward."

" Or backward," March suggested ruefully. " The
case is simply this : he owns the magazine."

" Of course."

"And he has a right to expect that I will con-
sider his pecuniary interests "

" Oh, those detestable pecuniary interests ! Don't
you wish there wasn't any money in the world ? "

" Yes ; or else that there was a great deal more
of it — And I was perfectly willing to do that. I
have always kept that in mind as one of my duties
to him, ever since I understood what his relation to
the magazine was."

" Yes, I can bear witness to that in any court of
justice. You 've done it a great deal more than I
could, Basil. And it was just the same way with
those horrible insurance people."

"I know," March went on, trying to be proof
against her flatteries, or at least to look as if he did
not deserve praise ; " I know that what Lindau said
was offensive to him, and I can understand how he
felt that he had a right to punish it. All I say is
that he had no right to punish it through me."

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 143

" Yes," said Mrs. March askingly.

"If it had been a question of making Every Other
Week the vehicle of Lindau's peculiar opinions —
though they 're not so very peculiar ; he might have
got the most of them out of liuskin — I shouldn't
have had any ground to stand on, or at least then I
should have had to ask myself whether his opinions
would be injurious to the magazine or not."

"I don't see," Mrs. March interpolated, "how
they could hurt it much worse than Colonel Wood-
burn's article crying up slavery."

" Well," said March impartially, " we could print
a dozen articles praising the slavery it 's impossible
to have back, and it wouldn't hurt us. But if we
printed one paper against the slavery which Lindau
claims still exists, some people would call us bad
names, and the counting-room would begin to feel it.
But that isn't the point. Lindau's connection with
Every Other Week is almost purely mechanical ; he 's
merely a translator of such stories and sketches
as he first submits to me, and it isn't at all a ques-
tion of his opinions hurting us, but of my becom-
ing an agent to punish him for his opinions. That
is what I wouldn't do; that's what I never will
do."

" If you did," said his wife, " I should perfectly
despise you. I didn't understand how it was before.
I thought you were just holding out against Dryfoos
because he took a dictatorial tone with you, and
because you wouldn't recognise his authority. But
now I 'm with you, Basil, every time, as that horrid
little Fulkerson says. But who would have ever

144 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

supposed he would be so base as to side against
you?"

"I don't know," said March thoughtfully, "that
we had a right to expect anything else. Fulkerson's
standards are low ; they 're merely business standards,
and the good that 's in him is incidental, and some-
thing quite apart from his morals and methods.
He 's naturally a generous and right-minded creature,
but life has taught him to truckle and trick, like the
rest of us."

"It hasn't taught you that, Basil."

" Don't be so sure. Perhaps it 's only that I 'm
a poor scholar. But I don't know, really, that I
despise Fulkerson so much for his course this morn-
ing as for his gross and fulsome flatteries of Dryfoos
last night. I could hardly stomach it."

His wife made him tell her what they were, and
then she said, "Yes, that was loathsome; I couldn't
have believed it of Mr. Fulkerson."

"Perhaps he only did iD to keep the talk going,
and to give the old man a chance to say something,"
March leniently suggested. " It was a worse effect
because he didn't or couldn't folloAv up Fulkerson's
lead."

" It was loathsome, all the same," his wife insisted.
"It's the end of Mr. Fulkerson, as far as I'm con-
cerned."

"I didn't tell you before," March resumed, after a
moment, " of my little interview with Conrad Dryfoos
after his father left," and now he went on to repeat
what had passed between him and the young man.

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 145

" I suspect that he and his father had been having
aome words before the old man came up to talk with
me, and that it was that made him so furious."

" Yes, but what a strange position for the son of
such a man to take ! Do you suppose he says such
things to his father ? "

" I don't know ; but I suspect that in his meek
way Conrad would say what he believed to anybody.
I suppose we must regard him as a kind of crank."

" Poor young fellow ! He always makes me feel
sad somehow. He has such a pathetic face. I don't
believe I ever saw him look quite happy, except that
night at Mrs. Horn's, when he was talking with Miss
Vance ; and then he made me feel sadder than ever."

" I don't envy him the life he leads at home, with
those convictions of his. I don't see why it wouldn't
be as tolerable there for old Lindau himself."

" Well, now," said Mrs. March, " let us put them
all out of our minds and see what we are going to
do ourselves."

They began to consider their wa}rs and means,
and how and where they should live, in view of
March's severance of his relations with Every Other
Week, They had not saved anything from the first
year's salary ; they had only prepared to save :
and they had nothing solid but their two thousand
to count upon. But they built a future in which
they easily lived on that and on what March earned
with his pen. He became a free lance, and fought
in whatever cause he thought just ; he had no ties,
no chains. They went back to Boston Avith the
VOL. II.— 7

146 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

heroic will to do what was most distasteful ; they
would have returned to their own house if they
had not rented it again ; but, any rate, Mrs. March
helped out by taking boarders, or perhaps only
letting rooms to lodgers. They had some hard
struggles, but they succeeded.

" The great thing," she said, " is to be right. I 'm
ten times as happy as if you had come home and
told me that you had consented to do what Dryfoos
asked, and he had doubled your salary."

" I don't think that would have happened in any
event," said March dryly.

" Well, no matter. I just used it for an example."

They both experienced a buoyant relief, such as
seems to come to people who begin life anew on
whatever terms. " I hope we are young enough yet,
Basil," she said, and she would not have it when he
said they had once been younger.

They heard the children's knock on the door ;
they knocked when they came home from school so
that their mother might let them in. " Shall we
tell them at once 1 " she asked, and ran to open for
them before March could answer.

They were not alone. Fulkerson, smiling from
ear to ear, was with them. " Is March in ? " he
asked.

" Mr. March is at home, yes," she said very
haughtily. " He 's in his study," and she led the
way there, while the children went to their rooms.

" Well, March," Fulkerson called out at sight of
him, " it 's all right ! The old man has come down."

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 147

" I suppose if you gentlemen are going to talk
business " Mrs. March began.

" Oh, we don't want you to go away," said Ful-
kerson. " I reckon March has told you, anyway."

"Yes, I've told her," said March. "Don't go,
Isabel. What do you mean, Fulkerson ? "

" He 's just gone on up home, and he sent me
round with his apologies. He sees now that he had
no business to speak to you as he did, and he with-
draws everything. He 'd 'a' come round himself if
I 'd said so, but I told him I could make it all right."

Fulkerson looked so happy in having the whole
affair put right, and the Marches knew him to be
so kindly affected toward them that they could not
refuse for the moment to share his mood. They
felt themselves slipping down from the moral height
which they had gained, and March made a clutch to
stay himself with the question, " And Lindau 1 "

"Well," said Fulkersou, "he's going to leave
Lindau to me. You won't have anything to do
with it. I '11 let the old fellow down easy."

"Do you mean," asked March, " that Mr. Dryfoos
insists on his being dismissed ? "

"Why, there isn't any dismissing about it," Ful-
kerson argued. " If you don't send him any more
work, he won't do any more, that's all. Or if he
comes round you can He 's to be referred to me.!>

March shook his head, and his wife, with a sigh,

felt herself plucked up from the soft circumstance of

their lives, which she had sunk back into so quickly,

and set beside him on that cold peak of principle

21

148 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

again. "It won't do, Fulkerson. It's very good of
you and all that, but it comes to the same thing in
the end. I could have gone on without any apology
from Mr. Dryfoos ; he transcended his authority,
but that 's a minor matter. I could have excused it
to his ignorance of life among gentlemen; but I
can't consent to Lindau's dismissal — it comes to that,
whether you do it or I do it, and whether it's a
positive or a negative thing — because he holds this
opinion or that."

"But don't you see," said Fulkerson, "that it's
just Lindau's opinions the old man can't stand 1 He
hasn't got anything against him personally. I don't
suppose there 's anybody that appreciates Lindau in
some ways more than the old man does."

" I understand. He wants to punish him for his
opinions. Well, I can't consent to that, directly or
indirectly. We don't print his opinions, and he has
a perfect right to hold them, whether Mr. Dryfoos
agrees with them or not."

Mrs. March had judged it decorous for her to say
nothing, but she now went and sat down in the
chair next her husband.

" Ah, dog on it ! " cried Fulkerson, rumpling his
hair with both his hands. '' What am I to do 1
The old man says he 's got to go."

" And I don't consent to his going," said March,

" And you won't stay if he goes 1 "

" I won't stay if he goes."

Fulkerson rose. "Well, well! I've got to see
about it. I 'm afraid the old man won't stand it,

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 149

March ; I am, indeed. I wish you 'd reconsider. I
— I 'd take it as a personal favour if you would. It
leaves me iu a fix. You see I 've got to side with
one or the other."

March made no reply to this, except to say, " Yes,
you must stand by him, or you must stand by me."

" Well, well ! Hold on a while ! I '11 see you in
the morning. Don't take any steps "

" Oh, there are no steps to take," said March, with
a melancholy smile. " The steps are stopped ;
that's all." He sank back into his chair when Ful-
kerson was gone, and drew a long breath. " This
is pretty rough. I thought we had got through it."

"No," said his wife. "It seems as if I had to
make the fight all over again."

" Well, it 's a good thing it 's a holy war."

" I can't bear the suspense. Why didn't you tell
him outright you wouldn't go back on any terms I "

" I might as well, and got the glory. He '11 never
move Dryfoos. I suppose we both would like to go
back, if we could."

"Oh, I suppose so."

They could not regain their lost exaltation, their
lost dignity. At dinner Mrs. March asked the
children how they would like to go back to Boston
to live.

" Why, we 're not going, are we ? " asked Tom
without enthusiasm.

"I was just wondering how you felt about it,
now," she said, with an underlook at her husband.

"Well, if we go back," said Bella, "I want to

150 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

live on the Back Bay. It 's awfully Micky at the
South End."

" I suppose I should go to Harvard," said Tom,
" and I 'd room out at Cambridge. It would be
easier to get at you on the Back Bay."

The parents smiled ruefully at each other, and in
view of these grand expectations of his children,
March resolved to go as far as he could in meeting
Dryfoos's wishes. He proposed the theatre as a
distraction from the anxieties that he knew were
pressing equally on his wife. " We might go to the
Old Homestead," he suggested, with a sad irony,
which only his wife felt.

"Oh yes, let's!" cried Bella.

While they were getting ready, some one rang,
and Bella went to the door, and then came to tell
her father that it was Mr. Lindau. " He says he
wants to see you just a moment. He's in the
parlour, and he won't sit down, or anything."

" What can he want 1 " groaned Mrs. March,
from their common dismay.

March apprehended a storm in the old man's face.
But he only stood in the middle of the room, looking
very sad and grave. " You are coing oudt," he
said. " I won't geep you long. I haf gome to pring
pack dose macassines, and dis mawney. I can't do
any more voark for you ; and I can't geep the
mawney you haf baid me a'ready. It iss not hawnest
mawney — that hass been oarned py voark ; it iss
mawney that hass peen male py sbeculation, and the
obbression off lapour, and the necessity of the boor,

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 151

py a man . Here it is, efery tollar, efery zent.

Dake it ; I feel as if dere vas ploodt on it."

" Why, Lindau," March began, but the old man
interrupted him.

" Ton't dalk to me, Passil ! I could not haf
believedt it of yon. When you know how I feel
about dose tings, why tidn't you dell me wfiose
mawney you bay oudt to me ? Ach, I ton't plame
you — I ton't rebroach you. You haf nefer thought
of it ; boat I — / have thought, and I should be
cuilty, I must share that man's cuilt, if I gept hiss
mawney. If you hat toldt me at the peginning — if
you hat peen frank with me — boat it iss all righdt ;
you can go on ; you ton't see dese tings as I see
them; and you haf cot a family, and I am a free
man. I voark to myself, and when I don't voark,
I sdarfe to myself. But I geep my handts glean,
voark or sdarfe. Gif him hiss mawney pack ! I am
sawry for him ; I would not hoart hiss feelings, boat
I could not pear to douch him, and hiss mawney iss
like boison ! "

March tried to reason with Lindau, to show him
the folly, the injustice, the absurdity of his course ;
it ended in their both getting angry, and in Lindau's
going away in a whirl of German that included Basil
in the guilt of the man whom Lindau called his
master.

"Well," said Mrs. March. "He is a crank, and
I think you 're well rid of him. Now you have no
quarrel with that horrid old Dryfoos, and you can
keep right on."

152 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

"Yes," said March, "I wish it didn't make me
feel so sneaking. What a long day it 's been ! It
seems like a century since I got up."

"Yes, a thousand years. Is there anything else
left to happen?"

" I hope not I 'd like to go to bed."

"Why, aren't you going to the theatre?" wailed
Bella, coming in upon her father's desperate ex-
pression.

" The theatre ? Oh yes, certainly ! I meant
after we got home," and March amused himself at
the puzzled countenance of the child. " Come on !
Is Tom ready 1 "

VIII.

FULKERSON parted with the Marches in such
trouble of mind that he did not feel able to meet
that night the people whom he usually kept so gay
at Mrs. Leighton's table. He went to Maroni's for
his dinner, for this reason, and for others more
obscure. He could not expect to do anything more
with Dryfoos at once ; he knew that Dryfoos must
feel that he had already made an extreme concession
to March, and he believed that if he was to get any-
thing more from him it must be after Dryfoos had
dined. But he was not without the hope, vague
and indefinite as it might be, that he should find
Lindau at Maroni's, and perhaps should get some
concession from him, some word of regret or apology
which he could report to Dryfoos, and at least make
the means of reopening the affair with him ; perhaps
Lindau, when he knew how matters stood, would
back down altogether, and for March's sake would
withdraw from all connection with Every Other Week
himself, and so leave everything serene. Fulkerson
felt capable, in his desperation, of delicately suggest-
ing such a course to Lindau, or even of plainly
advising it : he did not care for Lindau a great
7*

154 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

deal, and he did care a great deal for the
magazine.

But he did not find Lindau at Maroni's ; he only
found Beaton. He sat looking at the doorway as
Fulkerson entered, and Fulkerson naturally came
and took a place at his table. Something in
Beaton's large-eyed solemnity of aspect invited Ful-
kerson to confidence, and he said, as he pulled his
napkin open and strung it, still a little damp (as the
scanty, often-washed linen at Maroni's was apt to
be), across his knees, "I was looking for you this
morning, to talk with you about the Christmas
number, and I was a good deal worked up because I
couldn't find you ; but I guess I might as well have
spared myself my emotions."

"Why ?" asked Beaton briefly.

" Well, I don't know as there 's going to be any
Christmas number."

" Why 1 " Beaton asked again.

" Row between the financial angel and the literary
editor about the chief translator and polyglot smeller."

" Lindau ? "

"Lindau is his name."

" What does the literary editor expect after
Lindau 's expression of his views last night 1 "

" I don't know what he expected, but the ground
he took with the old man was that as Lindau's
opinions didn't characterise his work on the maga-
zine he would not be made the instrument of
punishing him for them : the old man wanted him
turned off, as he calls it."

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 155

"Seems to be pretty good ground," said Beaton
impartially, while he speculated, with a dull trouble
at heart, on the effect the row would have on his
own fortunes. His late visit home had made him
feel that the claim of his family upon him for some
repayment of help given could not be much longer
delayed ; with his mother sick and his father grow-
ing old, he must begin to do something for them,
but up to this time he had spent his salary even
faster than he had earned it : when Fulkerson came
in he was wondering whether he could get him to
increase it, if he threatened to give up his work,
and he wished that he was enough in love with
Margaret Vance, or even Christine Dryfoos, to
marry her, only to end in the sorrowful conviction
that he was really in love with Alma Leighton, who
had no money, and who had apparently no wish to
be married for love, even. "And what are you
going to do about it ? " he asked listlessly.

" Be dogged if I know what I 'm going to do about
it," said Fulkerson. " I 've been round all day, trying
to pick up the pieces — row began right after break-
fast this morning — and one time I thought I 'd got
the thing all put together again. I got the old man
to say that he had spoken to March a little too
authoritatively about Lindau ; that in fact he ought
to have communicated his wishes through me ; and
that he was willing to have me get rid of Lindau,
and March needn't have anything to do with it.
I thought that was pretty white, but March says the
apologies and regrets are all well enough in their

156 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

way, but they leave the main question where they
found it."

" What is the main question 1 " Beaton asked,
pouring himself out some Chianti ; as he set the
flask down he made the reflection that if he would
drink water instead of Chianti he could send his
father three dollars a week, on his back debts, and
he resolved to do it.

" The main question, as March looks at it, is the
question of punishing Lindau for his private
opinions ; he says that if he consents to my bounc-
ing the old fellow it 's the same as if he bounced him."

" It might have that complexion in some lights,"
said Beaton. He drank off his Chianti, and thought
he would have it twice a week, or make Maroni
keep the half-bottles over for him, and send his father
two dollars. '• And what are you going to do now ? "

" That 's what I don't know," said Fulkeraon
ruefully. After a moment he said desperately,
" Beaton, you 've got a pretty good head ; why
don't you suggest something ? "

"Why don't you let March go ?" Beaton suggested.

" Ah, I couldn't," said Fulkerson. " I got him to
break-up in Boston and come here; I -like him;
nobody else could get the hang of the thing like he
has ; he 's — a friend." Fulkerson said this with the
nearest approach he could make to seriousness,
which was a kind of unhappiness.

Beaton shrugged. " Oh, if you can afford to have
deals, I congratulate you. They 're too expensive for
me. Then, suppose you get rid of Dryfoos 1 "

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 157

Fulkerson laughed forlornly. " Go on, Bildad.
Like to sprinkle a few ashes over my boils 1 Don't
mind me \ "

They both sat silent a little Avhile, and then
Beaton said, " I suppose you haven't seen Dryfoos
the second time ?"

" Xo. I came in here to gird up my loins with
a little dinner before I tackled him, But something
seems to be the matter with Maroni's cook. / don't
want anything to eat."

"The cooking's about as bad as usual," said
Beaton. After a moment, he added ironically, for
he found Fulkerson's misery a kind of relief from
his own, and was willing to protract it as long as it
was amusing : " Why not try an envoy extraordinary
and minister plenipotentiary ? "

" What do you mean ? "

" Get that other old fool to go to Dryfoos for you !"

" Which other old fool ? The old fools seem to
be as thick as flies."

" That Southern one."

"Colonel Woodburn ?"

" Mmmmm."

" He did seem to rather take to the colonel ! "
Fulkerson mused aloud.

" Of course he did. Woodburn, with his idiotic
talk about patriarchal slavery, is the man on horse-
back to Dryfoos's muddy imagination. He 'd listen
to him abjectly, and he'd do whatever Woodburn
told him to do." Beaton smiled cynically.

Fulkerson got up and reached for his coat and

158 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

hat. "You've struck it, old man." The waiter
came up to help him on with his coat ; Fulkerson
slipped a dollar in his hand. " Never mind the
coat ; you can give the rest of my dinner to the
poor, Paolo. Beaton, shake ! You Ve saved my
life, little boy, though I don't think you meant it."
He took Beaton's hand and solemnly pressed it, and
then almost ran out of the door.

They had just reached coffee at Mrs. Leighton's
when he arrived, and sat down with them, and
began to put some of the life of his new hope into
them. His appetite revived, and after protesting
that he would not take anything but coffee, he went
back and ate some of the earlier courses. But with
the pressure of his purpose driving him forward, he
did not conceal from Miss Woodburn, at least, that
he was eager to get her apart from the rest for
some reason. When he accomplished this, it seemed
as if he had contrived it all himself, but perhaps he
had not wholly contrived it.

" I 'm so glad to get a chance to speak to you
alone," he said at once ; and while she waited for
the next word he made a pause, and then said
desperately, " I want you to help me ; and if you
can't help me, there 's no help for me."

" Mah goodness," she said, " is the case so bad as
that ? What in the woald is the trouble 1 "

" Yes, it 's a bad case," said Fulkerson. " I want
your father to help me."

" Oh, I thoat you said me \ "

" Yes ; I want you to help me with your father.

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 159

I suppose I ought to go to him at once, but I 'm a
little afraid of him."

" And you awe not afraid of me ? I don't think
that's very flattering, Mr. Fulkerson. You ought
to think Ah 'm twahce as awful as papa."

" Oh, I do ! You see, I 'm quite paralysed be-
fore you, and so I don't feel anything."

" Well, it 's a pretty lahvely kyand of paralysis.
But — go on."

"I will— I will. If I can only begin."

" Pohaps Ah maght begin fo' you."

" No, you can't. Lord knows, I 'd like to let you.
Well, it 's like this."

Fulkerson made a clutch at his hair, and then,
after another hesitation, he abruptly laid the whole
affair before her. He did not think it necessary to
state the exact nature of the offence Lindau had
given Dryfoos, for he doubted if she could grasp it,
and he was profuse of his excuses for troubling her
with the matter, and of wonder at himself for having
done so. In the rapture of his concern at having
perhaps made a fool of himself, he forgot why he
had told her ; but she seemed to like having been
confided in, and she said, " Well, Ah don't see what
you can do with you' ahdeals of friendship, except
stand bah' Mr. Mawch."

" My ideals of friendship ? What do you mean ? "

" Oh, don't you suppose we know ? Mr. Beaton
said you we' a pofect Bahyard in friendship, and
you would sacrifice anything to it."

"Is that so ?" said Fulkerson, thinking how easily

160 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

he could sacrifice Lindau in this case. He had never
supposed before that he was so chivalrous in such
matters, but he now began to see it in that light,
and he wondered that he could ever have entertained
for a moment the idea of throwing March over.

" But, Ah most say" Miss Woodburn went on,
" Ah don't envy you you' next interview with Mr.
Dryfoos. Ah suppose you '11 have to see him at
once aboat it."

The conjecture recalled Fulkerson to the object
of his confidences. " Ah, there 's where your help
comes in. I 've exhausted all the influence / have
with Dryfoos "

" Good gracious, you don't expect Ah could have
any ! "

They both laughed at the comic dismay with
which she conveyed the preposterous notion ; and
Fulkerson said, "If I judged from myself, I should
expect you to bring him round instantly."

" Oh, thank you, Mr. Fulkerson," she said, with
mock-meekness.

" Not at all. But it isn't Dryfoos I want you to
help me with ; it 's your father. I want your father
to interview Dryfoos for me, and I — I 'm afraid to
ask him."

" Poo' Mr. Fulkerson ! " she said, and she in-
sinuated something through her burlesque compas-
sion that lifted him to the skies. He swore in his
heart that the woman never lived who was so witty,
so wise, so beautiful, and so good. " Come raght
with me this minute, if the cy oast's clea'." She

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 161

vrent to the door of the dining-room and looked in
across its gloom to the little gallery where her father
sat beside a lamp reading his evening paper ; Mrs.
Leighton could be heard in colloquy with the cook
below, and Alma had gone to her room. She bec-
koned Fulkerson with the hand outstretched behind
her, and said, " Go and ask him."

" Alone ! " he palpitated.

" Oh, what a cyowahcl ! " she cried, and went with
him. "Ah suppose you'll want me to tell him
aboat it."

" Well, I wish you 'd begin, Miss Woodburn," he
said. " The fact is, you know, I 've been over it so
much I 'm kind of sick of the thing."

Miss Woodburn advanced, and put her hand on
her father's shoulder. " Look heah, papa ! Mr.
Fulkerson wants to ask you something, and he
wants me to do it fo' him."

The colonel looked up through his glasses with
the sort of ferocity elderly men sometimes have to
put on in order to keep their glasses from falling off.
His daughter continued : —

" He 'h got into an awful difficulty with his edito'
and his proprieto', and he wants you to pacify them."

" I do not know whethah I understand the case
exactly," said the colonel, " but Mr. Fulkerson may
command me to the extent of my ability."

" You don't understand it aftah what Ah Ve said?"
cried the girl. " Then Ah don't see but what
you '11 have to explain it you'self, Mr. Fulkerson."

"Well, Miss Woodburn has been so luminous

162 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

about it, colonel," said Fulkerson, glad of the joking
shape she had given the affair, '' that I can only
throw in a little side light here and there."

The colonel listened, as Fulkerson went on, with
a grave diplomatic satisfaction. He felt gratified,
honoured, even, he said, by Mr. Fulkerson's appeal
to him ; and probably it gave him something of the
high joy that an affair of honour would have
brought him in the days when he had arranged for
meetings between gentlemen. Next to bearing a
challenge, this work of composing a difficulty must
have been grateful. But he gave no outward sign
of his satisfaction in making a rtsumt of the case
so as to get the points clearly in his mind.

" I was afraid, sir," he said, with the state due to
the serious nature of the facts, "that Mr. Lindau
had given Mr. Dryfoos offence by some of his
questions at the dinner-table last night."

"Perfect red rag to a bull," Fulkerson put in;
and then he wanted to withdraw his words at
the colonel's look of displeasure.

" I have no reflections to make upon Mr. Lindau,"
Colonel Woodburn continued, and Fulkerson felt
grateful to him for going on ; "I do not agree with
Mr. Lindau ; I totally disagree with him on socio-
logical points ; but the course of the conversation
had invited him to the expression of his convictions,
and he had a right to express them, so far as they
had no personal bearing."

"Of course," said Fulkerson, while Miss Wood-
burn perched on the arm of her father's chair.

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 163

"At the same time, sir, I think that if Mr.
Dryfoos felt a personal censure in Mr. Lindau's
questions concerning his suppression of the strike
among his workmen, he had a right to resent it."

"Exactly," Fulkerson assented.

"But it must be evident to you, sir, that a high-
spirited gentleman like Mr. March — I confess that
my feelings are with him very warmly in the matter
— could not submit to dictation of the nature you
describe."

" Yes, I see," said Fulkerson ; and with that
strange duplex action of the human mind, he wished
that it was his hair, and not her father's, that Miss
Woodburn was poking apart with the corner of her
fan.

"Mr. Lindau," the colonel concluded, "was right
from his point of view, and Mr. Dryfoos was equally
right. The position of Mr. March is perfectly
correct "

His daughter dropped to her feet from his chair
arm. " Mah goodness ! If nobody 's in the wrong,
ho' awe you evah going to get the mattah straight 1 "

"Yes, you see," Fulkerson added, "nobody can
give in."

"Pardon me," said the colonel, "the case is one
in which all can give in."

"I don't know which '11 begin," said Fulkerson.

The colonel rose. "Mr. Lindau must begin, sir.

We must begin by seeing Mr. Lindau, and securing

from him the assurance that in the expression of his

peculiar views he had no intention of offering any

2K

164 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

personal offence to Mr. Dryfoos. If I have formed a
correct estimate of Mr. Lindau, this will be perfectly
simple."

Fulkerson shook his head. "But it wouldn't
help. Dryfoos don't care a rap whether Lindau
meant any personal offence or not. As far as that
is concerned, he 's got a hide like a hippopotamus.
But what he hates is Lindau's opinions, and what
he says is that no man who holds such opinions
shall have any work from him. And what March
says is that no man shall be punished through him
for his opinions, he don't care what they are."

The colonel stood a moment in silence. " And
what do you expect me to do under the circum-
stances ? "

" I came to you for advice — I thought you might
suggest "

" Do you wish me to see Mr. Dryfoos ? "

"Well, that's about the size of it," Fulkerson
admitted. "You see, colonel," he hastened on, "I
know that you have a great deal of influence with
him ; that article of yours is about the only thing
he 's ever read in Every Other Week, and he 's proud
of your acquaintance. Well, you know," and here
Fulkerson brought in the figure that struck him so
much in Beaton's phrase, and had been on his tongue
ever since, "you're the man on horseback to him;
and he 'd be more apt to do what you say than if
anybody else said it."

" You are very good, sir," said the colonel, trying
to be proof against the flattery, "but I am afraid

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 165

you overrate my influence." Fulkerson let him
ponder it silently, and his daughter governed her
impatience by holding her fan against her lips.
Whatever the process was in the colonel's mind, he
said at last : "I see no good reason for declining to
act for you, Mr. Fulkerson, and I shall be very
happy if I can be of service to you. But" — he
stopped Fulkerson from cutting in with precipitate
thanks — "I think I have a right, sir, to ask what
your course will be in the event of failure 1 "

" Failure 1 " Fulkerson repeated, in dismay.

" Yes, sir. I will not conceal from you that this
mission is one not wholly agreeable to my feelings."

" Oh, I understand that, colonel, and I assure you
that I appreciate, I —

" There is no use trying to blink the fact, sir, that
there are certain aspects of Mr. Dryfoos's character
in which he is not a gentleman. We have alluded
to this fact before, and I need not dwell upon it now.
I may say, however, that my misgivings were not
wholly removed last night."

" No," Fulkerson assented ; though in his heart he
thought the old man had behaved very well.

" What I wish to say now is that I cannot consent
to act for you, in this matter, merely as an interme-
diary whose failure would leave the affair in statu
quo."

" I see," said Fulkerson.

" And I should like some intimation, some assur-
ance, as to which party your own feelings are with
in the difference."

166 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

The colonel bent his eyes sharply on Fulkerson ;
Miss "Woodburn let hers fall ; Fulkerson felt that he
was being tested, and he said, to gain time, " As
between Lindau and Dryfoos 1 " though he knew
this was not the point.

" As between Mr. Dryfoos and Mr. March," said
the colonel.

Fulkerson drew a long breath, and took his cour-
age in both hands. " There can't be any choice for
me in such a case. I 'in for March, every time."

The colonel seized his hand, and Miss Woodburn
said, " If there had been any choice fo' you in such
a case, I should never have let papa sti' a step with
you."

" Why, in regard to that," said the colonel, with
a literal application of the idea, " was it your inten-
tion that we should both go 1 "

" Well, I don't know ; I suppose it was."

" I think it will be better for me to go alone," said
the colonel ; and, with a colour from his experience
in affairs of honour, he added : " In these matters a
principal cannot appear without compromising his
dignity. I believe I have all the points clearly in
mind, and I think I should act more freely in
meeting Mr. Dryfoos alone."

Fulkerson tried to hide the eagerness with which
he met these agreeable views. He felt himself ex-
alted in some sort to the level of the colonel's senti-
ments, though it would not be easy to say whether
this was through the desperation bred of having
committed himself to March's side, or through the

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 167

buoyant hope he had that the colonel would succeed
in his mission. " I Jm not afraid to talk with Dry-
foos about it," he said.

"There is no question of courage," said the
colonel. " It is a question of dignity — of personal
dignity."

" Well, don't let that delay you, papa," said his
daughter, following him to the door, where she
found him his hat, and Fulkerson helped him on
with his overcoat. " Ah shall be jost wald to know
ho' it's toned oat."

" Won't you let me go up to the house with you ?"
Fulkerson began. " I needn't go in "

" I prefer to go alone," said the colonel. " I wish
to turn the points over in my mind, and I am afraid
you would find me rather dull company."

He went out, and Fulkerson returned with Miss
Woodburn to the drawing-room, where she said the
Leightons were. They were not there, but she did
not seem disappointed.

"Well, Mr. Fulkerson," she said, "you have got
an ahdeal of friendship, su' enough."

" Me ? " said Fulkerson. " Oh, my Lord ! Don't
you see I couldn't do anything else ? And I 'm
scared half to death, anyway. If the colonel don't
bring the old man round, I reckon it 's all up with
me. But he '11 fetch him. And I 'm just prostrated
with gratitude to you, Miss Woodburn."

She waved his thanks aside with her fan. " What
do you mean by its being all up with you 1 "

" Why, if the old man sticks to his position, and

168 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

I stick to March, we've both got to go overboard
together. Dryfoos owns the magazine ; he can stop
it, or he can stop us, which amounts to the same
thing, as far as we 're concerned."

" And then what 1 " the girl pursued.

" And then, nothing — till we pick ourselves up."

"Do you mean that Mr. Dryfoos will put you
both oat of your places ? "

" He may."

" And Mr. Mawch takes the risk of that jost fo' a
principle 1 "

" I reckon."

" And you do it, jost fo' an ahdeal ? "

" It won't do to own it. I must have my little
axe to grind, somewhere."

" Well, men awe splendid," sighed the girl. " Ah
will say it."

" Oh, they 're not so much better than women,"
said Fulkerson, with a nervous jocosity. " I guess
March would have backed down if it hadn't been for
his wife. She was as hot as pepper about it, and
you could see that she would have sacrificed all her
husband's relations sooner than let him back down
an inch from the stand he had taken. It 's pretty
easy for a man to stick to a principle if he has a
woman to stand by him. But when you come to
play it alone •"

" Mr. Fulkerson," said the girl solemnly, " Ah
will stand bah you in this, if all the woald tones
against you." The tears came into her eyes, and
she put out her hand to him.

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 169

" You will 1 " he shouted, in a rapture. " In
every way — and always — as long as you live ? Do
you mean it 1 " He had caught her hand to his
breast and was grappling it tight there, and drawing
her to him.

The changing emotions chased each other through
her heart and over her face : dismay, shame, pride,
tenderness. " You don't believe," she said hoarsely,
" that I meant that ? "

"No, but I hope you do mean it ; for if you don't,
nothing else means anything."

There was no space, there was only a point of
wavering. " Ah do mean it."

When they lifted their eyes from each other again
it was half-past ten. " No' you most go," she said.

" But the colonel— our fate ? "

" The co'nel is often oat late, and Ah 'm not
afraid of any fate, no' that we Ve taken it into ouah
own hands." She looked at him with dewy eyes of
trust, of inspiration.

" Oh, it 's going to come out all right," he said.
"It can't come out wrong now, no matter what
happens. But who 'd have thought it, when I came
into this house, in such a state of sin and misery,
half an hour ago "

" Three houahs and a half ago ! " she said. " No'
you most jost go. Ah'm tahed to death. Good
night. You can come in the mawning to see — papa."
She opened the door, and pushed him out with
enrapturing violence, and he ran laughing down the
steps into her father's arms. f

VOL. II.— 8

170 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

" Why, colonel ! I was just going up to meet you."
He really thought he would walk off his exultation
in that direction.

"I am very sorry to say, Mr. Fulkerson," the
colonel began gravely, " that Mr. Dryfoos adheres
to his position."

" Oh, all right," said Fulkerson, with unabated
joy. "It's what I expected. Well, my course is
clear ; I shall stand by March, and I guess the world
won't come to an end if he bounces us both. But
I 'm everlasting obliged to you, Colonel Woodburn,
and I don't know what to say to you. I — I won't
detain you now ; it 's so late. I '11 see you in the
morning. Good ni "

Fulkerson did not realise that it takes two to
part. The colonel laid hold of his arm and turned
away with him. "I will walk toward your place
with you. I can understand why you should be
anxious to know the particulars of my interview
with Mr. Dryfoos ;" and in the statement which
followed he did not spare him the smallest. It out-
lasted their walk, and detained them long on the
steps of the Every Other Week building. But at the
end, Fulkerson let himself in with his key as light
of heart as if he had been listening to the gayest
promises that fortune could make.

By the time he met March at the office next
morning, a little, but only a very little, misgiving
saddened his golden heaven. He took March's
hand with high courage, and said, "Well, the old
man sticks to his point, March." He added, with the

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 171

sense of saying it before Miss Woodburn, " And /
stick by you. I've thought it all over, and I'd
rather be right with you than wrong with him."

"Well, I appreciate your motive, Fulkerson,"
said March. "But perhaps — perhaps we can save
over our heroics for another occasion. Lindau
seems to have got in with his, for the present."

He told him of Lindau's last visit, and they stood
a moment looking at each other rather queerly.
Fulkerson was the first to recover his spirits.
"Well," he said cheerily, "that let's us out."

" Does it 1 I 'm not sure it lets me out," said
March; but he said this in tribute to his crippled
self-respect rather than as a forecast of any action
in the matter.

" Why, what are you going to do 1 " Fulkerson
asked. " If Lindau won't work for Dryfoos you
can't make him."

March sighed. " What are you going to do with
this money 1 " He glanced at the heap of bills he
had flung on the table between them.

Fulkerson scratched his head. "Ah, dogged if
/ know. Can't we give it to the deserving poor,
somehow, if we can find 'em 1 "

"I suppose we Ve no right to use it in any way.
You must give it to Dryfoos."

" To the deserving rich 1 Well, you can always
find them. I reckon you don't want to appear in
the transaction ; / don't, either ; but I guess I
must." Fulkerson gathered up the money and
•carried it to Conrad. He directed him to account

172 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

for it in his books as conscience-money, and he
enjoyed the joke more than Conrad seemed to do
when he was told where it came from.

Fulkerson was able to wear off the disagreeable
impression the affair left during the course of the
forenoon, and he met Miss Woodburn with all a
lover's buoyancy when he went to lunch. She was
as happy as he when he told her how fortunately
the whole thing had ended, and he took her view
that it was a reward of his courage in having dared
the worst. They both felt, as the newly plighted
always do, that they were in the best relations with
the beneficent powers, and that their felicity had
been especially looked to in the disposition of events.
They were in a glow of rapturous content with
themselves and radiant worship of each other; she
was sure that he merited the bright future opening
to them both, as much as if he owed it directly to
some noble action of his own ; he felt that he was
indebted for the favour of Heaven entirely to the
still incredible accident of her preference of him
over other men.

Colonel Woodburn, who was not yet in the secret
of their love, perhaps failed for this reason to share
their satisfaction with a result so unexpectedly
brought about. The blessing on their hopes seemed
to his ignorance to involve certain sacrifices of
personal feeling at which he hinted in suggesting
that Dryfoos should now be asked to make some
abstract concessions and acknowledgments ; his
daughter hastened to deny that these were at all

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 173

necessary ; and Fulkerson easily explained why.
The thing was over ; what was the use of opening
it up again ?

"Perhaps none," the colonel admitted. But he
added, " I should like the opportunity of taking Mr.
Lind au's hand in the presence of Mr. Dryfoos, and
assuring him that I considered him a man of principle
and a man of honour ; a gentleman, sir, whom I was
proud and happy to have known."

" Well, Ah 've no doabt," said his daughter
demurely, "that you'll have the chance some day;
and we would all lahke to join you. But at the
same tahme, I think Mr. Fulkerson is well oat of it
fo' the present."

PAET FIFTH.

SUPERFICIALLY, the affairs of Every Other Week
settled into their wonted form again, and for Fulker-
son they seemed thoroughly reinstated. But March
had a feeling of impermanency from what had
happened, mixed with a fantastic sense of shame
toward Lindau. He did not sympathise with
Lindau's opinions, he thought his remedy for existing
evils as wildly impracticable as Colonel Woodburn's.
But while he thought this, and while he could justly
blame Fulkerson for Lindau's presence at Dryfoos's.
dinner, which his zeal had brought about in spite of
March's protests, still he could not rid himself of
the reproach of uncandour with Lindau. He ought
to have told him frankly about the ownership of the
magazine, and what manner of man the man was
whose money he was taking. But he said that he
never could have imagined that he was serious in
his preposterous attitude in regard to a class of men
who embody half the prosperity of the country;
and he had moments of revolt against his own
humiliation before Lindau, in which he found it

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 175

monstrous that he should return Dryfoos's money as
if it had been the spoil of a robber. His wife agreed
with him in these moments, and said it was a great
relief not to have that tiresome old German coming
about. They had to account for his absence
evasively to the children, whom they could not very
well tell that their father was living on money that
Lindau disdained to take, even though Lindau was
wrong and their father was right. This heightened
Mrs. March's resentment toward both Lindau and
Dryfoos, who between them had placed her husband
in a false position. If anything, she resented
Dryfoos's conduct more than Lindau's. He had
never spoken to March about the affair since Lindau
had renounced his work, or added to the apologetic
messages he had sent by Fulkerson. So far as
March knew, Dryfoos had been left to suppose that
Lindau had simply stopped for some reason that did
not personally affect him. They never spoke of him,
and March was too proud to ask either Fulkerson or
Conrad whether the old man knew that Lindau had
returned his money. He avoided talking to Conrad,
from a feeling that if he did, he should involuntarily
lead him on to speak of his differences with his
father. Between himself and Fulkerson, even, he
was uneasily aware of a want of their old perfect
friendliness. Fulkerson had finally behaved with
honour and courage ; but his provisional reluctance
had given March the measure of Fulkerson's
character in one direction, and he could not ignore
the fact that it was smaller than he could have wished.

176 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

He could not make out whether Fulkerson shared
his discomfort or not. It certainly wore away, even
with March, as time passed, and with Fulkerson, in
the bliss of his fortunate love, it was probably far
more transient, if it existed at all. He advanced
into the winter as radiantly as if to meet the spring,
and he said that if there were any pleasanter month
of the year than November, it was December,
especially when the weather was good and wet and
muddy most of the time, so that you had to keep
indoors a long while after you called anywhere.

Colonel Woodburn had the anxiety, in view of his
daughter's engagement, when she asked his consent
to it, that such a dreamer must have in regard to
any reality that threatens to affect the course of his
reveries. He had not perhaps taken her marriage
into account, except as a remote contingency ; and
certainly Fulkerson was not the kind of son-in-law
that he had imagined in dealing with that abstrac-
tion. But because he had nothing of the sort
definitely in mind, he could not oppose the selection
of Fulkerson with success ; he really knew nothing
against him, and he knew many things in his
favour ; Fulkerson inspired him with the liking that
every one felt for him in a measure ; he amused
him, he cheered him ; and the Colonel had been so
much used to leaving action of all kinds to his
daughter that when he came to close quarters with
the question of a son-in-law, he felt helpless to
decide it, and he let her decide it, as if it were still
to be decided when it was submitted to him. She

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 177

was competent to treat it in all its phases : not
merely those of personal interest, but those of duty
to the broken Southern past, sentimentally dear to
him, and practically absurd to her. No such South
as he remembered had ever existed to her know-
ledge, and no such civilisation as he imagined would
ever exist, to her belief, anywhere. She took the
world as she found it, and made the best of it. She
trusted in Fulkerson ; she had proved his magna-
nimity in a serious emergency ; and in small things
she was willing fearlessly to chance it with him.
She was not a sentimentalist, and there was nothing
fantastic in her expectations ; she was a girl of
good sense and right mind, and she liked the im-
mediate practicality as well as the final honour of
Fulkerson. She did not idealise him, but in the
highest effect she realised him ; she did him justice,
and she would not have believed that she did him
more than justice if she had sometimes known him
to do himself less.

Their engagement was a fact to which the
Leighton household adjusted itself almost as simply
as the lovers themselves; Miss Woodburn told the
ladies at once, and it was not a thing that Fulkerson
could keep from March very long. He sent word
of it to Mrs. March by her husband ; and his
engagement perhaps did more than anything else
to confirm the confidence in him which had been
shaken by his early behaviour in the Lindau epi-
sode, and not wholly restored by his tardy fidelity
to March. But now she felt that a man who
8* 2L

178 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

wished to get married so obviously and entirely foi
love was full of all kinds of the best instincts, and
only needed the guidance of a wife to become very
noble. She interested herself intensely in balancing
the respective merits of the engaged couple, and
after her call upon Miss Woodburn in her new
character she prided herself upon recognising the
worth of some strictly Southern qualities in her,
while maintaining the general average of New
England superiority. She could not reconcile her-
self to the Virginian custom illustrated in her
having been christened with the surname of Madi-
son ; and she said that its pet form of Mad, which
Fulkerson promptly invented, only made it more
ridiculous.

Fulkerson was slower in telling Beaton. He was
afraid, somehow, of Beaton's taking the matter in
the cynical way ; Miss Woodburn said she would
break off the engagement if Beaton was left to guess
it or find it out by accident, and then Fulkerson
plucked up his courage. Beaton received the news
with gravity, and with a sort of melancholy meek-
ness that strongly moved Fulkerson's sympathy, and
made him wish that Beaton was engaged too.

It made Beaton feel very old; it somehow left
him behind and forgotten; in a manner, it made
him feel trifled with. Something of the unfriendli-
ness of fate seemed to overcast his resentment, and
he allowed the sadness of his conviction that he had
not the means to marry on to tinge his recognition
of the fact that Alma Leighton would not have

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 179

wanted him to marry her if he had. He was now
often in that martyr mood in which he wished to
help his father ; not only to deny himself Chianti,
but to forego a fur-lined overcoat which he intended
to get for the winter. He postponed the moment
of actual sacrifice as regarded the Chianti, and he
bought the overcoat in an anguish of self-reproach.
He wore it the first evening after he got it in going
to call upon the Leightons, and it seemed to him a
piece of ghastly irony when Alma complimented his
picturesqueness in it, and asked him to let her
sketch him.

" Oh, you can sketch me," he said, with so much
gloom that it made her laugh.

"If you think it's so serious, I'd rather not."

" No, no ! Go ahead ! How do you want me ? "

" Oh, fling yourself down on a chair in one of
your attitudes of studied negligence ; and twist one
corner of your moustache with affected absence of
mind."

"And you think I'm always studied, always
affected 1 "

" I didn't say so."

" I didn't ask you what you said."

" And I won't tell you what I think."

"Ah, I know what you think."

" What made you ask, then ? " The girl laughed
again with the satisfaction of her sex in cornering
a man.

Beaton made a show of not deigning to reply, and
put himself in the pose she suggested frowning.

180 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

" Ah, that 's it. But a little more animation.
" As when a great thought strikes along the brain,
And flushes all the cheek.' "

She put her forehead down on the back of her
hand and laughed again. " You ought to be photo-
graphed. You look as if you were sitting for it."

Beaton said : " That 's because I know I am being
photographed, in one way. I don't think you ought
to call me affected. I never am so with you ; I
know it wouldn't be of any use."

" Oh, Mr. Beaton, you natter."

" No, I never flatter you."

" I meant you flattered yourself."

"How?"

" Oh, I don't know. Imagine."

" I know what you mean. You think I can't be
sincere with anybody."

" Oh, no I don't."

" What do you think ? "

"That you can't — try." Alma gave another
victorious laugh.

Miss Woodburn and Fulkerson would once have
both feigned a great interest in Alma's sketching
Beaton, and made it the subject of talk, in which
they approached as nearly as possible the real
interest of their lives. Now they frankly remained
away, in the dining-room, which was very cozy after
the dinner had disappeared ; the colonel sat with his
lamp and paper in the gallery beyond; Mrs. Leighton
was about her housekeeping affairs, in the content
she always felt when Alma was with Beaton.

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 181

" They seem to be having a pretty good time in
there," said Fulkerson, detaching himself from his
own absolute good time as well as he could.

" At least Alma does," said Miss Woodburn.

" Do you think she cares for him 1 "

" Quahte as moch as he desoves."

" What makes you all down on Beaton around
here ? He 's not such a bad fellow."

" We awe not all doan on him. Mrs. Leighton
isn't doan on him."

" Oh, I guess if it was the old lady, there wouldn't
be much question about it."

They both laughed, and Alma said, " They seem
to be greatly amused with something in there."

"Me, probably," said Beaton. "I seem to amuse
everybody to-night."

" Don't you always ? "

"I always amuse you, I'm afraid, Alma."

She looked at him as if she were going to snub
.him openly for using her name ; but apparently she
decided to do it covertly. " You didn't at first. I
really used to believe you could be serious once."

" Couldn't you believe it again ? Now 1 "

" Not when you put on that wind-harp stop."

"Wetmore has been talking to you about me.
He would sacrifice his best friend to a phrase. He
spends his time making them."

"He's made some very pretty ones about you."

" Like the one you just quoted ? "

" No, not exactly. He admires you ever so much.
He says ." She stopped, teasingly.

182 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

" What 1 "

"He says you could be almost anything you
wished, if you didn't wish to be everything."

"That sounds more like the school of "Wetmore.
That's what you say, Alma. Well, if there were
something you wished me to be, I could be it."

" We might adapt Kingsley : ' Be good, sweet
maid, and let who will be clever.' " He could not help
laughing. She went on: "I always thought that
was the most patronising and exasperating thing ever
addressed to a human girl ; and we Ve had to stand
a good deal in our time. I should like to have it
applied to the other ' sect ' a while. As if any girl
that was a girl would be good if she had the remotest
chance of being clever."

" Then you wouldn't wish me to be good ? '
Beaton asked.

"Not if you were a girl."

"You want to shock me. Well, I suppose I
deserve it. But if I were one-tenth part as good as
you are, Alma, I should have a lighter heart than I
have now. I know that I 'm fickle, but I 'm not
false, as you think I am."

" Who said I thought you were false 1 "

" No one," said Beaton. " It isn't necessary,
when you look it — live it."

" Oh, dear ! I didn't know I devoted my whole
time to the subject."

" I know I 'm despicable. I could tell you some-
thing— the history of this day, even — that would
make you despise me." Beaton had in mind his

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 183

purchase of the overcoat, which Alma was getting
in so effectively, with the money he ought to have
sent his father. " But," he went on darkly, with a
sense that what he was that moment suffering for
his selfishness must somehow be a kind of atonement,
which would finally leave him to the guiltless enjoy-
ment of the overcoat, "you wouldn't believe the
depths of baseness I could descend to."

" I would try," said Alma, rapidly shading the
collar, " if you 'd give me some hint."

Beaton had a sudden wish to pour out his remorse
to her, but he was afraid of her laughing at him.
He said to himself that this was a very wholesome
fear, and that if he could always have her at hand
he should not make a fool of himself so often. A
man conceives of such an office as the very noblest
for a woman; he worships her for it if he is
magnanimous. But Beaton was silent, and Alma
put back her head for the right distance on her
sketch. " Mr. Fulkerson thinks you are the
sublimest of human beings for advising him to get
Colonel Woodburn to interview Mr. Dryfoos about
Lindau. What have you ever done with your
Judas ? "

" I haven't done anything with it. Nadel thought
he would take hold of it at one time, but he dropped
it again. After all, I don't suppose it could be
popularised. Fulkerson wanted to offer it as a
premium to subscribers for Every Other Week, but I
sat down on that."

Alma could not feel the absurdity of this, and she

184 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

merely said, " Every Other Week seems to be going on
just the same as ever."

" Yes, the trouble has all blown over, I believe
Fulkerson," said Beaton, with a return to what they
were saying, " has managed the whole business very
well. But he exaggerates the value of my advice."

" Very likely," Alma suggested vaguely. " Or
no ! Excuse me ! He couldn't, he couldn't ! She
laughed delightedly at Beaton's foolish look of
embarrassment.

He tried to recover his dignity in saying, " He 's
a very good fellow, and he deserves his happiness "

"Oh, indeed!" said Alma perversely. "Does
any one deserve happiness 1 "

"I know I don't," sighed Beaton.

" You mean you don't get it."

"I certainly don't get it."

"Ah, but that isn't the reason."

" What is ? "

" That 's the secret of the universe." She bit in
her lower lip, and looked at him with eyes of gleans
ing fun.

" Are you never serious 1 " he asked.

" With serious people — always.'

" / am serious ; and you have the secret of my

happiness ." He threw himself impulsively

forward in his chair.

" Oh, pose, pose ! " she cried.

" I won't pose," he answered, " and you have got
to listen to me. You know I 'm in love with you ;
and I know that once you cared for me. Can't that

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 185

time — won't it — come back again 1 Try to think so,
Alma ! "

" No," she said, briefly and seriously enough.

"But that seems impossible. What is it I've
done — what have you against me ? "

" Nothing. But that time is past. I couldn't
recall it if I wished. Why did you bring it up ?
You Ve broken your word. You know I wouldn't
have let you keep coming here if you hadn't
promised never to refer to it."

" How could I help it ? With that happiness near
us — Fulkerson "

" Oh, it 's that 1 I might have known it ! "

"No, it isn't that — it's something far deeper.
But if it 's nothing you have against me, what is it,
Alma, that keeps you from caring for me now as
you did then ? I haven't changed."

"But / have. I shall never care for you again,
Mr. Beaton ; you might as well understand it once
for all. Don't think it's anything in yourself, or
that I think you unworthy of me. I 'm not so self-
satisfied as that ; I know very well that I 'm not a
perfect character, and that I Ve no claim on perfec-
tion in anybody else. I think women who want
that are fools ; they won't get it, and they don't
deserve it. But I 've learned a good deal more about
myself than I knew in St. Barnaby, and a life of
work, of art, and of art alone — that's what I've
made up my mind to."

" A woman that 's made up her mind to that has
no heart to hinder her ! "

186 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

" Would a man have that had done so 1"

" But I don't believe you, Alma. You 're merely
laughing at me. And besides, with me you needn't
give up art. We could work together. You know
how much I admire your talent. I believe I could
help it — serve it ; I would be its willing slave, and
yours, Heaven knows ! "

" I don't want any slave — nor any slavery. I want
to be free — always. Now do you see 1 I don't care
for you, and I never could in the old way ; but I
should have to care for some one more than I believe
I ever shall to give up my work. Shall we go on ? "
She looked at her sketch.

" No, we shall not go on," he said, gloomily as
he rose.

" I suppose you blame me," she said, rising too.

" Oh no ! I blame no one — or only myself. I
threw my chance away."

" I 'm glad you see that ; and I 'm glad you did
it. You don't believe me, of course. Why do men
think life can be only the one thing to women ?
And if you come to the selfish view, who are the
happy women 1 I 'm sure that if work doesn't fail
me, health won't, and happiness won't."

" But you could work on with me "

" Second fiddle. Do you suppose I shouldn't be
woman enough to wish my work always less and
lower than yours ? At least I Ve heart enough for
that ! "

" You Ve heart enough for anything, Alma. I
was a fool to say you hadn't."

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 187

" I think the women who keep their hearts have
an even chance, at least, of having heart "

" Ah, there 's where you 're wrong ! "

" But mine isn't mine to give you, anyhow. And
now I don't want you ever to speak to me about this
again."

" Oh, there 's no danger ! " he cried bitterly. " I
shall never willingly see you again."

" That 's as you like, Mr. Beaton. We Ve had to
"be very frank, but I don't see why we shouldn't be
friends. Still, we needn't, if you don't like."

" And I may come — I may come here — as — as
usual 1 "

" Why, if you can consistently," she said, with a
smile, and she held out her hand to him.

He went home dazed, and feeling as if it were a
bad joke that had been put upon him. At least the
affair went so deep that it estranged the aspect of
his familiar studio. Some of the things in it were
not very familiar ; he had spent lately a great deal
on rugs, on stuffs, on Japanese bric-a-brac. When
he saw these things in the shops he had felt that he
must have them ; that they were necessary to him ;
and he was partly in debt for them, still without
having sent any of his earnings to pay his father.
As he looked at them now he liked to fancy some-
thing weird and conscious in them as the silent wit-
nesses of a broken life. He felt about among some
of the smaller objects on the mantel for his pipe.
Before he slept he was aware, in the luxury of his
despair, of a remote relief, an escape ; and after all,

188 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

the understanding he had come to with Alma was
only the explicit formulation of terms long tacit
between them. Beaton would have been puzzled
more than he knew if she had taken him seriously.
It was inevitable that he should declare himself in
love with her ; but he was not disappointed at her
rejection of his love ; perhaps not so much as he
would have been at its acceptance, though he tried
to think otherwise, and to give himself airs of
tragedy. He did not really feel that the result was
worse than what had gone before, and it left him
free.

But he did not go to the Leightons again for so
long a time that Mrs. Leighton asked Alma what
had happened. Alma told her.

" And he won't come any more 1 " her mother
sighed, with reserved censure.

" Oh, I think he will. He couldn't very well come
the next night. But he has the habit of coming,
and with Mr. Beaton habit is everything — even the.
habit of thinking he 's in love with some one."

" Alma," said her mother, " I don't think it 's
very nice for a girl to let a young man keep coming
to see her after she 's refused him."

" Why not, if it amuses him and doesn't hurt the
girl?" "

" But it does hurt her, Alma. It — it 's indelicate.
It isn't fair to him ; it gives him hopes."

" Well, mamma, it hasn't happened in the given
case yet. If Mr. Beaton comes again I won't see
him, and you can forbid him the house."

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 189

" If I could only feel sure, Alma," said her
mother, taking up another branch of the inquiry,
" that you really knew your own mind, I should be
easier about it."

" Then you can rest perfectly quiet, mamma. I
do know my own mind ; and what 's worse, I know
Mr. Beaton's mind."

" What do you mean ? "

" I mean that he spoke to me the other night
simply because Mr. Fulkerson's engagement had
broken him all up."

"What expressions!" Mrs. Leigh ton lamented.

" He let it out himself," Alma went on. " And
you wouldn't have thought it was very flattering
yourself. When I 'm made love to, after this, I
prefer to be made love to in an off-year, when there
isn't another engaged couple anywhere about."

" Did you tell him that, Alma ? "

" Tell him that ! What do you mean, mamma ?
I may be indelicate, but I 'm not quite so indelicate
as that."

" I didn't mean you were indelicate, really, Alma,
but I wanted to warn you. I think Mr. Beaton was
very much in earnest."

" Oh, so did he !"

" And you didn't ? "

" Oh yes, for the time being. I suppose he 's very
much in earnest with Miss Vance at times, and with
Miss Dryfoos at others. Sometimes he 's a painter,
and sometimes he 's an architect, and sometimes he 's
a sculptor. He has too many gifts — too many tastes."

190 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

" And if Miss Vance, and Miss Dryfoos '

" Oh, do say Sculpture and Architecture, mamma !
It 's getting so dreadfully personal ! "

" Alma, you know that I only wish to get at your
real feeling in the matter."

" And you know that I don't want to let you —
especially when I haven't got any real feeling in the
matter. But I should think — speaking in the
abstract entirely — that if either of those arts was
ever going to be in earnest about him, it would
want his exclusive devotion for a week at least."

"I didn't know," said Mrs. Leighton, "that he
was doing anything now at the others. I thought
he was entirely taken up with his work on Every
Other Week"

" Oh, he is ! he is ! "

"And you certainly can't say, my dear, that he
hasn't been very kind — very useful to you, in that
matter."

"And so I ought to have said yes out of grati-
tude ? Thank you, mamma ! I didn't know you
held me so cheap."

"You know whether I hold you cheap or not,
Alma. I don't want you to cheapen yourself. I
don't want you to trifle with any one. I want you
to be honest with yourself."

" Well, come now, mamma ! Suppose you begin.
I 've been perfectly honest with myself, and I 've
been honest with Mr. Beaton. I don't care for him,
and I 've told him I didn't ; so he may be supposed
to know it If he comes here after this, he 11 come

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 191

as a plain, unostentatious friend of the family, and
it's for you to say whether he shall come in that
capacity or not. I hope you won't trifle with him,
and let him get the notion that he 's coming on any
other basis."

Mrs. Leighton felt the comfort of the critical
attitude far too keenly to abandon it for anything
constructive. She only said, " You know very well,
Alma, that 's a matter I can have nothing to do with."

" Then you leave him entirely to me 1 "

" I hope you will regard his right to candid and
open treatment."

" He 's had nothing but the most open and candid
treatment from me, mamma. It 's you that want to
play fast and loose with him. And to tell you the
truth, I believe he would like that a good deal
better ; I believe that if there 's anything he hates,
it's openness and candour."

Alma laughed, and put her arms round her
mother, who could not help laughing a little too.

n.

THE winter did not renew for Christine and Mela
the social opportunity which the spring had offered.
After the musicale at Mrs. Horn's, they both made
their party-call, as Mela said, in due season • but
they did not find Mrs. Horn at home, and neither
she nor Miss Vance came to see them after people
returned to town in the fall. They tried to believe
for a time that Mrs. Horn had not got their cards ;
this pretence failed them, and they fell back upon
their pride, or rather Christine's pride. Mela had
little but her good-nature to avail her in any exi-
gency, and if Mrs. Horn or Miss Vance had come to
call after a year of neglect, she would have received
them as amiably as if they had not lost a day in
coming. But Christine had drawn a line, beyond
which they would not have been forgiven ; and she
had planned the words and the behaviour with
which she would have punished them if they had
appeared then. Neither sister imagined herself in
anywise inferior to them ; but Christine was sus-
picious, at least, and it was Mela who invented the
hypothesis of the lost cards. As nothing happened

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 193

to prove or to disprove the fact, she said, " I move
we put Coonrod up to gittun' it out of Miss Vance,
at some of their meetin's."

" If you do," said, Christine, " I '11 kill you."

Christine, however, had the visits of Beaton to
console her, and if these seemed to have no definite
aim, she was willing to rest in the pleasure they
gave her vanity ; but Mela had nothing. Sometimes
she even wished they were all back on the farm.

" It would be the best thing for both of you,"
said Mrs. Dryfoos, in answer to such a burst of
desperation. " I don't think New York is any place
for girls."

" "Well, what I hate, mother,' said Mela, '• is, it
don't seem to be any place for young men, either."
She found this so good when she had said it that
she laughed over it till Christine was angry.

" A body would think there had never been any
joke before."

"I don't see as it's a joke," said Mrs. Dryfoos.
<l It 's the plain truth."

" Oh, don't mind her, mother," said Mela. " She 's
put out because her old Mr. Beaton ha'n't been
round for a couple o' weeks. If you don't watch
out, that fellow '11 give you the slip, yit, Christine,
after all your pains."

" Well, there ain't anybody to give you the slip,
Mela," Christine clawed back.

" No ; I ha'n't ever set my traps for anybody."
This was what Mela said for want of a better retort ;
but it was not quite true. When Kendricks came
VOL. II— 9 2 M

194 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

with Beaton to call after her father's dinner, bhe
used all her cunning to ensnare him, and she had
him to herself as long as Beaton stayed ; Dryfoos
sent down word that he was not very well, and had
gone to bed. The novelty of Mela had worn off for
Kendricks, and she found him, as she frankly told
him, not half as entertaining as he was at Mrs.
Horn's ; but she did her best with him as the only
flirtable material which had yet come to her hand.
It would have been her ideal to have the young men
stay till past midnight, and her father come down-
stairs in his stocking-feet, and tell them it was time
to go. But they made a visit of decorous brevity,
and Kendricks did not come again. She met him
afterward, once, as she was crossing the pavement
in Union Square, to get into her coupe", and made
the most of him ; but it was necessarily very little,
and so he passed out of her life without having left
any trace in her heart, though Mela had a heart
that she would have put at the disposition of almost
any young man that wanted it. Kendricks himself,
Manhattan cockney as he was, with scarcely more
outlook into the average American nature than if he
had been kept a prisoner in New York society all
his days, perceived a property in her which forbade
him as a man of conscience to trifle with her ; some-
thing earthly good and kind, if it was simple and
vulgar. In revising his impressions of her, it seemed
to him that she Avould come even to better literary
effect if this were recognised in her; and it made
her sacred, in spite of her willingness to fool and to

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 195

be fooled, in her merely human quality. After all,
he saw that she wished honestly to love and to be
loved, and the lures she threw out to that end
seemed to him pathetic rather than ridiculous ; he
could not join Beaton in laughing at her ; and he
did not like Beaton's laughing at the other girl,
either. It seemed to Kendricks, with the code of
honour which he mostly kept to himself because he
was a little ashamed to find there were so few others
like it, that if Beaton cared nothing for the other
girl — and Christine appeared simply detestable to
Kendricks — he had better keep away from her, and
not give her the impression he was in love with her.
He rather fancied that this was the part of a gentle-
man, and he could not have penetrated to that
sesthetic and moral complexity which formed the con-
sciousness of a nature like Beaton, and was chiefly a
torment to itself; he could not have conceived of
the wayward impulses indulged at every moment in
little things, till the straight highway was traversed
and wellnigh lost under their tangle. To do what-
ever one likes is finally to do nothing that one likes,
even though one continues to do what one will ; but
Kendricks, though a sage of twenty-seven, was still
too young to understand this.

Beaton scarcely understood it himself, perhaps
because he was not yet twenty-seven. He only
knew that his will was somehow sick ; that it spent
itself in caprices, and brought him no happiness
from the fulfilment of the most vehement wish.
But he was aware that his wishes grew less and les*

196 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

vehement ; he began to have a fear that some time
he might have none at all. It seemed to him that
if he could once do something that was thoroughly
distasteful to himself, he might make a beginning in
the right direction ; but when he tried this on a
small scale it failed, and it seemed stupid. Some
sort of expiation was the thing he needed, he was
sure ; but he could not think of anything in particu-
lar to expiate ; a man could not expiate his tempera-
ment, and his temperament was what Beaton decided
to be at fault. He perceived that it went deeper
than even fate would have gone ; he could have ful-
filled an evil destiny and had done with it, however
terrible. His trouble was that he could not escape
from himself ; and for the most part, he justified
himself in refusing to try. After he had come to
that distinct understanding with Alma Leighton,
and experienced the relief it really gave him, he
thought for a while that if it had fallen out other-
wise, and she had put him in charge of her destiny,
he might have been better able to manage his own.
But as it was, he could only drift, and let all other
things take their course. It was necessary that he
should go to see her afterward, to show her that he
was equal to the event ; but he did not go so often,
and he went rather oftener to the Dryfooses ; it was
not easy to see Margaret Vance, except on the society
terms. With much sneering and scorning, he ful-
filled the duties to Mrs. Horn without which he knew
he should be dropped from her list ; but one might
go to many of her Thursdays without getting many

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 197

words with her niece. Beaton hardly knew whether
he wanted many ; the girl kept the charm of her
innocent stylishness ; but latterly she wanted to talk
more about social questions than about the psychical
problems that young people usually debate so per-
sonally. Son of the working-people as he was,
Beaton had never cared anything about such
matters ; he did not know about them or wish to
know ; he was perhaps too near them. Besides,
there was an embarrassment, at least on her part,
concerning the Dryfooses. She was too high-minded
to blame him for having tempted her to her failure
with them by his talk about them ; but she was
conscious of avoiding them in her talk. She had
decided not to renew the effort she had made in the
spring; because she could not do them good as
fellow-creatures needing food and warmth and work,
and she would not try to befriend them socially ;
she had a horror of any such futile sentimentality.
She would have liked to account to Beaton in this
way for a course which she suspected he must have
heard their comments upon, but she did not quite
know how to do it ; she could not be sure how much
or how little he cared for them. Some tentative
approaches which she made toward explanation were
met with such eager disclaim of personal interest
that she knew less than before what to think ; and
she turned the talk from the sisters to the brother,
whom it seemed she still continued to meet in their
common work among the poor.

" He seems very different," she ventured.

198 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

"Oh, quite," said Beaton. "He's the kind of
person that you might suppose gave the Catholics
a hint for the cloistral life ; he 's a cloistered nature
— the nature that atones and suffers for. But he 's
awfully dull company, don't you think 1 I never
can get anything out of him."

" He 's very much in earnest."

" Remorselessly. We 've got a profane and mun-
dane creature there at the office who runs us all,
and it 's shocking merely to see the contact of the
two natures. When Fulkerson gets to joking Dry-
foos — he likes to put his joke in the form of a pre-
tence that Dryfoos is actuated by a selfish motive,
that he has an eye to office, and is working up a
political interest for himself on the East side — it 's
something inexpressible."

" I should think so," said Miss Vance, with such
lofty disapproval that Beaton felt himself included
in it for having merely told what caused it.

He could not help saying, in natural rebellion,
"Well, the manof one ideais always alittle ridiculous."

" When his idea is right ? " she demanded. " A
right idea can't be ridiculous."

"Oh, I only said the man that held it alone.
He 's flat ; he has no relief, no projection."

She seemed unable to answer, and he perceived
that he had silenced her to his own disadvantage.
It appeared to Beaton that she was becoming a little
too exacting for comfort in her idealism. He put
down the cup of tea he had been tasting, and said,
in his solemn staccato, " I must go. Good-bye ! " and

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 199

got instantly away from her, with an effect he had of
having suddenly thought of something imperative.

He went up to Mrs Horn for a moment's hail and
farewell, and felt himself subtly detained by her
through fugitive passages of conversation with half
a dozen other people. He fancied that at crises of
this strange interview Mrs. Horn was about to be-
come confidential with him, and confidential, of all
things, about her niece. She ended by not having
palpably been so. In fact, the concern in her mind
would have been difficult to impart to a young man,
and after several experiments Mrs. Horn found it
impossible to say that she wished Margaret could
somehow be interested in lower things than those
which occupied her. She had watched with grow-
ing anxiety the girl's tendency to various kinds of
self-devotion. She had dark hours in which she
even feared her entire withdrawal from the world
in a life of good works. Before now, girls had
entered the Protestant sisterhoods, which appeal so
potently to the young and generous imagination,
and Margaret was of just the temperament to be
influenced by them. During the past summer she
had been unhappy at her separation from the cares
that had engrossed her more and more as their stay
in the city drew to an end in the spring, and she
had hurried her aunt back to town earlier in the fall
than she would have chosen to come. Margaret had
her correspondents among the working-women whom
she befriended. Mrs. Horn was at one time alarmed
to find that Margaret was actually promoting a strike

200 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

of the button-hole workers. This, of course, had its
ludicrous side, in connection with a young lady in
good society, and a person of even so little humour
as Mrs. Horn could not help seeing it. At the
same time she could not help foreboding the worst
from it ; she was afraid that Margaret's health would
give way under the strain, and that if she did not go
into a sisterhood she would at least go into a decline.
She began the winter with all such counteractive
measures as she could employ. At an age when
such things weary, she threw herself into the plea-
sures of society with the hope of dragging Margaret
after her; and a sympathetic witness must have
followed with compassion her course from ball to
ball, from reception to reception, from parlour-read-
ing to parlour-reading, from musicale to musicale,
from play to play, from opera to opera. She tasted,
after she had practically renounced them, the bitter
and the insipid flavours of fashionable amusement,
in the hope that Margaret might find them sweet,
and now at the end she had to own to herself that
she had failed. It was coming Lent again, and the
girl had only grown thinner and more serious with
the diversions that did not divert her from the bale-
ful works of beneficence on which Mrs. Horn felt
that she was throwing her youth away. Margaret
could have borne either alone, but together they
were wearing her out. She felt it a duty to undergo
the pleasures her aunt appointed for her, but she
could not forego the other duties in which she found
her only pleasure.

A HAZARD OP NEW FORTUNES. 201

She kept up her music still because she could
employ it at the meetings for the entertainment,
and, as she hoped, the elevation of her working-
women; but she neglected the other aesthetic in-
terests which once occupied her; and at sight of
Beaton talking with her, Mrs. Horn caught at the
hope that he might somehow be turned to account
in reviving Margaret's former interest in art. She
asked him if Mr. Wetmore had his classes that
winter as usual ; and she said she wished Margaret
could be induced to go again : Mr. Wetmore always
said that she did not draw very well, but that she
had a great deal of feeling for it, and her work was
interesting. She asked, were the Leightons in town
again ; and she murmured a regret that she had not
been able to see anything of them, without explain-
ing why ; she said she had a fancy that if Margaret
knew Miss Leighton, and what she was doing, it
might stimulate her, perhaps. She supposed Miss
Leighton was still going on with her art ]

Beaton said, Oh yes, he believed so.

But his manner did not encourage Mrs. Horn to
pursue her aims in that direction, and she said, with
a sigh, she wished he still had a class ; she always
fancied that Margaret got more good from his in-
struction than from any one else's.

He said that she was very good ; but there was
really nobody who knew half as much as Wetmore,
or could make any one understand half as much.

Mrs. Horn was afraid, she said, that Mr. Wetmore 's
terrible sincerity discouraged Margaret; he would
• 9*

202 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

not let her have any illusions about the outcome of
what she was doing ; and did not Mr. Beaton think
that some illusion was necessary with young people 1
Of course it was very nice of Mr. Wetmore to be so
honest, but it did not always seem to be the wisest
thing. She begged Mr. Beaton to try to think of
some one who would be a little less severe. Her
tone assumed a deeper interest in the people who
were coming up and going away, and Beaton per-
ceived that he was dismissed.

He went away with vanity flattered by the sense
of having been appealed to concerning Margaret,
and then he began to chafe at what she had said of
Wetmore's honesty, apropos of her wish that he still
had a class himself. Did she mean, confound her !
that he was insincere, and would let Miss Vance
suppose she had more talent than she really had ?
The more Beaton thought of this, the more furious
he became; and the more he was convinced that
something like it had been unconsciously if not
consciously in her mind. He framed some keen
retorts, to the general effect that with the atmosphere
of illusion preserved so completely at home, Miss
Vance hardly needed it in her art studies. Having
just determined never to go near Mrs. Horn's
Thursdays again, he decided to go once more, in
order to plant this sting in her capacious but some-
what callous bosom ; and he planned how he would
lead the talk up to the point from which he should
launch it.

la the meantime he felt the need of some present

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 203

solace, such as only unqualified worship could give
him ; a cruel wish to feel his power in some direction
where, even if it were resisted, it could not be over-
come, drove him on. That a woman who was to
Beaton the embodiment of artificiality should inti-
mate, however innocently — the innocence made it
all the worse — that he was less honest than Wetmore,
whom he knew to be so much more honest, was
something that must be retaliated somewhere before
his self-respect could be restored. It was only five
o'clock, and he went on uptown to the Dryfooses',
though he had been there only the night before last.
He asked for the ladies, and Mrs. Mandel received him.

" The young ladies are down-town shopping," she
said, "but I am very glad of the opportunity of see-
ing you alone, Mr. Beaton. You know I lived
several years in Europe."

"Yes," said Beaton, wondering what that could
have to do with he'r pleasure in seeing him alone.
" I believe so 1 " He involuntarily gave his words
the questioning inflection.

"You have lived abroad, too, and so you won't
find what I am going to ask so strange. Mr. Beaton,
why do you come so much to this house 1 " Mrs.
Mandel bent forward with an aspect of lady-like
interest, and smiled.

Beaton frowned. " Why do I come so much 1 "

" Yes."

"Why do I . Excuse me, Mrs. Mandel, but will

you allow me to ask why you ask ? "

" Oh, certainly. There 's no reason why I

204 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

shouldn't say, for I wish you to be very frank with
me. I ask because there are two young ladies in
this house; and, in a certain way, I have to take
the place of a mother to them. I needn't explain
why ; you know all the people here, and you under-
stand. I have nothing to say about them, but I
should ,not be speaking to you now if they were
not all rather helpless people. They do not know
the world they have come to live in here, and they
cannot help themselves nor one another. But you
do know it, Mr. Beaton, and I am sure you know
just how much or how little you mean by coming
here. You are either interested in one of these
young girls or you are not. If you are, I have

nothing more to say. If you are not .'' Mrs.

Mandel continued to smile, but the smile had grown
raore perfunctory, and it had an icy gleam.

Beaton looked at her with surprise that he gravely
kept to himself. He had always regarded her as a
social nullity, with a kind of pity, to be sure, as a
civilised person living among such people as the
Dryfooses, but not without a humorou.s contempt;
he had thought of her as Mandel, and sometimes
as old Mandel, though she was not half a score of
years his senior, and was still well on the sunny side
of forty. He reddened, and then turned an angry
pallor. " Excuse me again, Mrs. Mandel. Do you
ask this from the young ladies 1 "

" Certainly not," she said, with the best temper,
and with something in her tone that convicted
Beaton of vulgarity in putting his question of her

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 205

authority in the form of a sneer. " As I have sug-
gested, they would hardly know how to help them-
selves at all in such a matter. I have no objection
to saying that I ask it from the father of the young
ladies. Of course, in and for myself I should have
no right to know anything about your affairs. I
assure you the duty of knowing isn't very pleasant."
The little tremor in her clear voice struck Beaton as
something rather nice.

"I can very well believe that, Mrs. Mandel," he said,
with a dreamy sadness in his own. He lifted his eyes,
and looked into hers. " If I told you that I cared
nothing about them in the way you intimate 1 "

" Then I should prefer to let you characterise
your own conduct in continuing to come here for
the year past, as you have done, and tacitly leading
them on to infer differently." They both mechani-
cally kept up the fiction of plurality in speaking of
Christine, but there was no doubt in the mind of
either which of the young ladies the other meant.

A good many thoughts went through Beaton's
mind, and none of them were flattering. He had
not been unconscious that the part, he had played
toward this girl was ignoble, and that it had grown
meaner as the fancy which her beauty had at first
kindled in him had grown cooler. He was aware
that of late he had been amusing himself with her
passion in a way that was not less than cruel, not
because he wished to do so, but because he was
listless and wished nothing. He rose in saying, " I
might be a little more lenient than you think, Mrs.

206 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

Mandel ; but I won't trouble you with any palliating
theory. I will not come any more."

He bowed, and Mrs. Mandel said, " Of course, it 's
only your action that I am concerned with."

She seemed to him merely triumphant, and he
could not conceive what it had cost her to nerve
herself up to her too easy victory. He left Mrs.
Mandel to a far harder lot than had fallen to him,
and he went away hating her as an enemy who had
humiliated him at a moment when he particularly
needed exalting. It was really very simple for him
to stop going to see Christine Dryfoos, but it was
not at all simple for Mrs. Mandel to deal with the
consequences of his not coming. He only thought
how lightly she had stopped him, and the poor
woman whom he had left trembling for what she
had been obliged to do embodied for him the con-
science that accused him of unpleasant things.

" By heavens ! this is piling it up," he said to-
himself through his set teeth, realising how it had
happened right on top of that stupid insult from
Mrs. Horn. Now he should have to give up his
place on Every Other Week • he could not keep that,
under the circumstances, even if some pretence were
not made to get rid of him ; he must hurry and an-
ticipate any such pretence ; he must see Fulkerson at
once ; he wondered where he should find him at that
hour. He thought, with bitterness so real that it gave
him a kind of tragical satisfaction, how certainly he
could find him a little later at Mrs. Leighton's ; and
Fulkerson's happiness became an added injury.

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 207

The thing had of course come about just at the
wrong time. There never had been a time when
Beaton needed money more ; when he had spent
what he had and what he expected to have so reck-
lessly. He was in debt to Fulkerson personally
and officially for advance payments of salary. The
thought of sending money home made him break
into a scoffing laugh, which he turned into a cough
in order to deceive the passers. What sort of face
should he go to Fulkerson with and tell. him that he
renounced his employment on Every Other Week;
and what should he do when he had renounced it *!
Take pupils, perhaps ; open a class 1 A lurid con-
ception of a class conducted on those principles of
shameless flattery at which Mrs. Horn had hinted —
he believed now she had meant to insult him — pre-
sented itself. Why should not he act upon the sug-
gestion ? He thought — with loathing for the whole
race of women-dabblers in art — how easy the thing
would be : as easy as to turn back now and tell that
old fool's girl that he loved her, and rake in half his
millions. Why should not he do that ? No one else
cared for him ; and at a year's end, probably, one
woman would be like another as far as the love was
concerned, and probably he should not be more tired
if the woman were Christine Dryfoos than if she
were Margaret Vance. He kept Alma Leighton out
of the question, because at the bottom of his heart
he believed that she must be for ever unlike every
other woman to him.

The tide of his confused and aimless reverie had

2N

208 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

carried him far down-town, he thought ; but when
he looked up from it to see where he was, he found
himself on Sixth Avenue, only a little below Thirty-
ninth Street, very hot and blown ; that idiotic fur
overcoat was stifling. He could not possibly walk
down to Eleventh ; he did not Avant to walk even to
the Elevated station at Thirty-fourth ; he stopped at
the corner to wait for a surface-car, and fell again
into his bitter fancies. After a while he roused him-
self and looked up the track, but there was no car
coming. He found himself beside a policeman, who
was lazily swinging his club by its thong from his
wrist.

" When do you suppose a car will be along ? " he
asked, rather in a general sarcasm of the absence of
the cars than in any special belief that the policeman
could tell him.

The policeman waited to discharge his tobacco
juice into the gutter. " In about a week," he said
nonchalantly.

"What's the matter?" asked Beaton, wondering
what the joke could be.

" Strike," said the policeman. His interest in
Beaton's ignorance seemed to overcome his contempt
of it. " Knocked off everywhere this morning except
Third Avenue and one or two cross-town lines." He
spat again and kept his bulk at its incline over the
gutter to glance at a group of men on the corner
below. They were neatly dressed, and looked like
something better than working men, and they had a
holiday air of being in their best clothes.

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

" Some of the strikers ? " asked Beaton.

The policeman nodded

"Any trouble yet?"

" There won't be any trouble till we begin to
move the cars," said the policeman.

Beaton felt a sudden turn of his rage toward the
men whose action would now force him to Avalk five
blocks and mount the stairs of the Elevated station.
"If you 'd take out eight or ten of those fellows," he
said ferociously, " and set them up against a wall
and shoot them, you 'd save a great deal of bother."

" I guess we sha'n't have to shoot much," said the
policeman, still swinging his locust. " Anyway, we
sha'n't begin it. If it comes to a fight, though," he
said, with a look at the men under the scooping rim
of his helmet, " we can drive the whole six thousand
of 'em into the East Jliver without pullin' a trigger."

" Are there six thousand in it ] "

" About."

" What do the infernal fools expect to live on ? "

" The interest of their money, I suppose," said the
officer, with a gr'm of satisfaction in his irony. " It's
got to run its course. Then they '11 come back with
their heads tied up and their tails between their
legs, and plead to be taken on again."

" If I was a manager of the roads," said Beaton,
thinking of how much he was already inconvenienced
by the strike, and obscurely connecting it as one of the
series with the wrongs he had suffered at the hands
of Mrs. Horn and Mrs. Mandel, " I. would see them
starve before I 'd take them back — every one of them."

210 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

" Well," said the policeman impartially, as a man
might whom the companies allowed to ride free, but
who had made friends with a good many drivers
and conductors in the course of his free riding, " I
guess that 's what the roads would like to do if they
could ; but the men are too many for them, and
there ain't enough other men to take their places."

" No matter," said Beaton severely. " They can
bring in men from other places."

" Oh, they '11 do that fast enough," said the police-
man.

A man came out of the saloon on the corner where
the strikers were standing, noisy drunk, and they
began, as they would have said, to have some fun
with him. The policeman left Beaton, and sauntered
slowly down toward the group as if in the natural
course of an afternoon ramble.- On the other side
of the street Beaton could see another officer
sauntering up from the block below. Looking up
and down the avenue, so silent of its horse-car
bells, he saw a policeman at every corner. It was
rather impressive.

III.

THE strike made a good deal of talk in the office
of Every Other Week — that is, it made Fulkerson talk
a good deal. He congratulated himself that he was
not personally incommoded by it, like some of the
fellows who lived up-town, and had not everything
under one roof, as it were. He enjoyed the excite-
ment of it, and he kept the office-boy running out
to buy the extras which the newsmen came crying
through the street almost every hour with a
lamentable, unintelligible noise. He read not only
the latest intelligence of the strike, but the editorial
comments on it, which praised the firm attitude of
both parties, and the admirable measures taken by
the police to preserve order. Fulkerson enjoyed
the interviews with the police captains and the
leaders of the strike ; he equally enjoyed the
attempts of the reporters to interview the road
managers, which were so graphically detailed, and
with such a fine feeling for the right use of scare-
heads as to have almost the value of direct expres-
sions from them, though it seemed that they had
resolutely refused to speak. He said, at second-
hand from the papers, that if the men behaved

212 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

themselves vand respected the rights of property,
they would have public sympathy with them every
time ; but just as soon as they began to interfere
with the roads' right to manage their own affairs in
their own way, they must be put down with an
iron hand; the phrase "iron hand "did Fulkerson
almost as much good as if it had never been used
before. News began to come of fighting between
the police and the strikers when the roads tried to
move their cars with men imported from Philadelphia,
and then Fulkerson rejoiced at the splendid courage
of the police. At the same time he believed what
the strikers said, and that the trouble was not made
by them, but by gangs of roughs acting without
their approval. In this juncture he was relieved
by the arrival of the State Board of Arbitration,
which took up its quarters, with a great many scare-
heads, at one of the principal hotels, and invited the
roads and the strikers to lay the matter in dispute
before them ; he said that now we should see the
working of the greatest piece of social machinery in
modern times. But it appeared to work only in the
alacrity of the strikers to submit their grievance.
The roads were as one road in declaring that there
was nothing to arbitrate, and that they were merely
asserting their right to manage their own affairs in
their own way. One of the presidents was reported
to have told a member of the Board, who personally
summoned him, to get out and to go about his
business. Then, to Fulkerson's extreme disappoint-
ment, the august tribunal, acting on behalf of the

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 213

sovereign people in the interest of peace, declared
itself powerless and got out, and would, no doubt,
have gone about its business if it had had any.
Fulkerson did not know what to say, perhaps
because the extras did not ; but March laughed at
this result.

" It 's a good deal like the military manoeuvre of
the King of France and his forty thousand men. I
suppose somebody told him at the top of the hill
that there was nothing to arbitrate, and to get out
and go about his business, and that was the reason
he marched down after he had marched up with all
that ceremony. What amuses me is to find that in
an affair of this kind the roads have rights and the
strikers have rights, but the public has no rights at
all. The roads and the strikers are allowed to fight
out a private war in our midst — as thoroughly and
precisely a private war as any we despise the Middle
Ages for having tolerated — as any street war in
Florence or Verona — and to fight it out at our pains
and expense, and we stand by like sheep, and wait
till we get tired. It 's a funny attitude for a city of
fifteen hundred thousand inhabitants."

" What would you do 1 " asked Fulkerson, a good
deal daunted by this view of the case.

"Do? Nothing. Hasn't the State Board of
Arbitration declared itself powerless 1 We have no
hold upon the strikers ; and we 're so used to being
snubbed and disobliged by common carriers that we
have forgotten our hold on the roads, and always
allow them to manage their own affairs in their own

214 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

way, quite as if AVG had nothing to do with them, and
they owed us no services in return for their privi-
leges."

"That 's a good deal so," said Fulkerson, disordering
his hair. " Well, it 's nuts for the colonel nowadays.
He says if he was boss of this town he would seize
the roads on behalf of the people, and man 'em with
policemen, and run 'em till the managers had come
to terms with the strikers ; and he 'd do that every
time there was a strike."

" Doesn't that rather savour of the paternalism he
condemned in Lindau 1 " asked March.

" I don't know. It savours of horse-sense."

"You are pretty far gone, Fulkerson. I thought
you were the most engaged man I ever saw ; but I
guess you're more father-in-lawed. And before
you 're married too."

" Well, the colonel 's a glorious old fellow, March.
I wish he had the power to do that thing, just for
the fun of looking on while he waltzed in. He 's on
the keen jump from morning till night, and he 's up
late and early to see the row. I 'm afraid he '11 get
shot at some of the fights ; he sees them all ; / can't
get any show at them : haven't seen a brickbat
shied or a club swung yet. Have you ? "

" No, I find I can philosophise the situation about
as well from the papers, and that's what I really
want to do, I suppose. Besides I 'm solemnly
pledged by Mrs. March not to go near any sort of
crowd, under penalty of having her bring the children
and go with me. Her theory is that we must all die

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 215

together ; the children haven't been at school since
the strike began. There 's no precaution that Mrs.
March hasn't used. She watches me whenever I go
out, and sees that I start straight for this office."

Fulkerson laughed and said : " Well, it 's probably
the only thing that 's saved your life. Have you
seen anything of Beaton lately ? "

" No. You don't mean to say lie 's killed ! "

"Not if he knows it. But I don't know .

What do you say, March ? What 's the reason
you couldn't get us up a paper on the strike 1 "

"I knew it would fetch round to Every Other
Week, somehow."

"No, but seriously. There'll be plenty of news-
paper accounts. But you could treat it in the
historical spirit — like something that happened
several centuries ago ; De Foe's Plague of London
style. Heigh ? What made me think of it was
Beaton. If I could get hold of him, you two could
go round together and take down its aesthetic
aspects. It 's a big thing, March, this strike is. I
tell you it 's imposing to have a private war, as you
say, fought out this way, in the heart of New York,
and New York not minding it a bit. See ? Might
take that .view of it. With your descriptions and
Beaton's sketches — well, it would just be the
greatest card ! Come ! What do you say ? "

" Will you undertake to make it right with Mrs.
March if I 'm killed and she and the children are
not killed with me 1 "

" Well, it would be difficult. I wonder how

216 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

it would do to get Kendricks to do the literary
part?"

" I Ve no doubt he 'd jump at the chance. I Ve
yet to see the form of literature that Kendricks
wouldn't lay down his life for."

" Say ! " March perceived that Fulkerson was
about to vent another inspiration, and smiled
patiently. " Look here ! What 's the reason we
couldn't get one of the strikers to write it up
for us?"

" Might have a symposium of strikers and presi-
dents," March suggested.

" No ; I 'm in earnest. They say some of those
fellows — especially the foreigners — are educated
men. I know one fellow — a Bohemian — that used
to edit a Bohemian newspaper here. He could
write it out in his kind of Dutch, and we could get
Lindau to translate it."

"I guess not," said March dryly.

" Why not ? He 'd do it for the cause, wouldn't
he ? Suppose you put it up on him, the next time
you see him."

" I don't see Lindau any more," said March. He
added, " I guess he 's renounced me along with Mr,
Dryfoos's money."

" Pshaw ! You don't mean he hasn't been round
since 1 "

" He came for a while, but he 's left off coming now.
I don't feel particularly gay about it," March said,
with some resentment of Fulkerson 's grin. " He 's
left me in debt to him for lessons to the children."

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 217

Fulkerson laughed out. " Well, he is the greatest
old fool ! Who 'd 'a' thought he 'd 'a' been in earnest
with tkose ' brincibles ' of his ? But I suppose there
have to be just such cranks ; it takes all kinds to
make a world."

" There has to be one such crank, it seems," March
partially assented. " One 's enough for me."

" I reckon this thing is nuts for Lindau, too," said
Fulkerson. " Why, it must act like a schooner of
beer on him all the while, to see ' gabidal ' embar-
rassed like it is by this strike. It must make old
Lindau feel like he Avas back behind those barricades
at Berlin. Well, he 's a splendid old fellow ; pity
he drinks, as I remarked once before."

When March left the office he did not go home
so directly as he came, perhaps because Mrs. March's
eye was not on him. He was very curious about
some aspects of the strike, whose importance, as a
great social convulsion, he felt people did not recog-
nise ; and with his temperance in everything, he
found its- negative expressions as significant as its
more violent phases. He had promised his wife
solemnly that he would keep away from these, and
he had a natural inclination to keep his promise ;
he had no wish to be that peaceful spectator who
always gets shot when there is any firing on a mob.
He interested himself in the apparent indifference of
the mighty city, which kept on about its business as
tranquilly as if the private war being fought out in
its midst were a vague rumour of Indian troubles on
the frontier ; and he realised how there might once
VOL. II.— 10

218 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

have been a street feud of forty years in Florence
without interfering materially with the industry and
prosperity of the city. On Broadway there was a
silence where a jangle and clatter of horse-car bells
and hoofs had been, but it was not very noticeable ;
and on the avenues, roofed by the elevated roads,
this silence of the surface tracks was not noticeable
at all in the roar of the trains overhead. Some of
the cross-town cars were beginning to run again ;
with a policeman on the rear of each ; on the Third
Avenue line, operated by non-union men, who had
not struck, there were two policemen beside the
driver of every car, and two beside the conductor,
to protect them from the strikers. But there were
no strikers in sight, and on Second Avenue they
stood quietly about in groups on the corners.
While March watched them at a safe distance, a
car laden Avith policemen came down the track, but
none of the strikers offered to molest it. In their
simple Sunday best, March thought them very quiet,
decent-looking people, and he could well believe that
they had nothing to do with the riotous outbreaks
in other parts of the city. He could hardly believe
that there were any such outbreaks ; he began more
and more to think them mere newspaper exaggera-
tions in the absence of any disturbance, or the dis-
position to it, that he could see. He walked on to
the East River : Avenues A, B, and C presented the
same quiet aspect as Second Avenue ; groups of men
stood on the corners, and now and then a police-
laden car was brought unmolested down the tracks

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 219

before them ; they looked at it and talked together,
and some laughed, but there was no trouble.

March got a cross-town car, and came back to the
West side. A policeman, looking very sleepy and
tired, lounged on the platform.

" I suppose you '11 be glad when this cruel war
is over," March suggested, as he got in.

The officer gave him a surly glance and made him
no answer.

His behaviour, from a man born to the joking
give and take of our life, impressed March. It gave
him a fine sense of the ferocity which he had read
of the French troops putting on toward the populace
just before the coup d'dtat; he began to feel like
populace ; but he struggled with himself and regained
his character of philosophical observer. In this
character he remained in the car and let it carry him
by the corner where he ought to have got out and
gone home, and let it keep on with him to one of
the furthermost tracks westward, where so much of
the fighting was reported to have taken place. But
everything on the way was as quiet as on the East
side.

Suddenly the car stopped with so quick a turn of
the brake that he was half thrown from his seat,
and the policeman jumped down from the platform
and ran forward.

IV.

DRYFOOS sat at breakfast that morning with Mrs.
Mandel as usual to pour out his coffee. Conrad had
already gone down-town; the two girls lay abed
much later than their father breakfasted, and their
mother had gradually grown too feeble to come down
till lunch. Suddenly Christine appeared at the door.
Her face was white to the edges of her lips, and her
eyes were blazing.

" Look here, father ! Have you been saying any-
thing to Mr. Beaton ? "

The old man looked up at her across his coffee-
cup through his frowning brows. "No."

Mrs. Mandel dropped her eyes, and the spoon
shook in her hand.

" Then what 's the reason he don't come here any
more ? " demanded the girl ; and her glance darted
from her father to Mrs. Mandel. " Oh, it 's you, is
it ? I 'd like to know who told you to meddle in
other people's business ? "

" I did," said Dryfoos savagely. " J told her to
ask him what he wanted here, and he said he didn't
want anything, and he stopped coming. That 's all.
I did it myself."

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 221

" Oh, you did, did you 1 " said the girl, scarcely
less insolently than she had spoken to Mrs. Mandel.
" I should like to know what you did it for ] I 'd
like to know what made you think I wasn't able to
take care of myself. I just knew somebody had
been meddling, but I didn't suppose it was you. I
can manage my own affairs in my own way, if you
please, and I '11 thank you after this to leave me to
myself in what don't concern you."

"Don't concern me ? You impudent jade !" her
father began.

Christine advanced from the doorway toward the
table ; she had her hands closed upon what seemed
trinkets, some of which glittered and dangled from
them. She said, " Will you go to him and tell him
that this meddlesome minx here had no business to
say anything about me to him, and you take it all
back 1 "

" No ! " shouted the old man. " And if "

" That 's all I want of you I " the girl shouted in
her turn. " Here are your presents." With both
hands she flung the jewels — pins and rings and ear-
rings and bracelets — among the breakfast dishes,
from which some of them sprang to the floor. She
stood a moment to pull the intaglio ring from the
finger where Beaton put it a year ago, and dashed
that at her father's plate. Then she whirled out of
the room, and they heard her running upstairs.

The old man made a start toward her, but he fell
back in his chair before she was gone, and with a
fierce, grinding movement of his jaws, controlled

222 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

himself. " Take — take those things up," he gasped
to Mrs. Mandel. He seemed unable to rise again
from his chair, but when she asked him if he were
unwell, he said no, with an air of offence, and got
quickly to his feet. He mechanically picked up the
intaglio ring from the table while he stood there, and
put it on his little finger ; his hand was not much
bigger than Christine's. " How do you suppose she
found it out 1 " he asked, after a moment.

" She seems to have merely suspected it," said
Mrs. Mandel, in a tremor, and with the fright in
her eyes which Christine's violence had brought
there.

" Well, it don't make any difference. She had to
know, somehow, and now she knows." He started
toward the door of the library, as if to go into the
hall, where his hat and coat always hung.

" Mr. Dryfoos," palpitated Mrs. Mandel, " I can't
remain here, after the language your daughter has
used to me — I can't let you leave me — I — I 'm afraid
of her "

" Lock yourself up, then," said the old man rudely.
He added, from the hall before he went out, " I
reckon she '11 quiet down now."

He took the elevated road. The strike sesmed a
very far-off thing, though the paper he bought to
look up the stock market was full of noisy typo-
graphy about yesterday's troubles on the surface
lines. Among the millions in Wall Street there was
some joking and some swearing, but not much think-
ing about the six thousand men who had taken such

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 223

chances in their attempt to better their condition.
Dryfoos heard nothing of the strike in the lobby of
the Stock Exchange, where he spent two or three
hours watching a favourite stock of his go up and go
down under the betting. By the time the Exchange
closed it had risen eight points, and on this and
some other investments he was five thousand dollars
richer than he had been in the morning. But he
had expected to be richer still, and he was by no
means satisfied with his luck. All through the
excitement of his winning and losing had played
the dull, murderous rage he felt toward the child
who had defied him, and when the game was over
and he started home, his rage mounted into a sort
of frenzy ; he would teach her, he would break her.
He walked a long way without thinking, and then
waited for a car. None came, and he hailed a pass-
ing coupe\

"What has got all the cars 1 " he demanded of the
driver, who jumped down from his box to open the
door for him and get his direction.

" Been away 1 " asked the driver. " Hasn't been
any car along for a week. Strike."

"Oh yes," said Dryfoos. He felt suddenly giddy,
and he remained staring at the driver after he had
taken his seat.

The man asked, " Where to ? "

Dryfoos could not think of his street or number,
and he said with uncontrollable fury, "I told you
once ! Go up to West Eleventh, and drive along
slow on the south side ; I '11 show you the place."
20

224 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

He could not remember the number of Every Other
Week office, where he suddenly decided to stop before
he went home. He wished to see Fulkerson, and
ask him something about Beaton : whether he had
been about lately, and whether he had dropped any
hint of what had happened concerning Christine;
Dryfoos believed that Fulkerson was in the fellow's
confidence.

There was nobody but Conrad in the counting-
room, whither Dryfoos returned after glancing into
Fulkerson's empty office. " Where 's Fulkerson ? "
he asked, sitting down with his hat on.

" He went out a few moments ago," said Conrad,
glancing at the clock. " I 'm afraid he isn't coming
back again to-day, if you wanted to see him."

Dryfoos twisted his head side wise and upward to
indicate March's room. "That other fellow out,
too?"

" He went just before Mr. Fulkerson," answered
Conrad.

"Do you generally knock off here in the middle
of the afternoon ? " asked the old man.

"No," said Conrad, as patiently as if his father
had not been there a score of times, and found the
whole staff of Every Other Week at work between four
and five. "Mr. March, you know, always takes a
good deal of his work home with him, and I suppose
Mr. Fulkerson went out so early because there isn't
much doing to-day. Perhaps it's the strike that
makes it dull."

" The strike — yes ! It 's a pretty piece of business

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 225

to have everything thrown out because a parcel of
lazy hounds want a chance to lay off and get drunk."
Dryfoos seemed to think Conrad would make some
answer to this, but the young man's mild face merely
saddened, and he said nothing. " I Ve got a coup6
out there now that I had to take because I couldn't
get a car. If I had my way I ''d have a lot of those
vagabonds hung. They're waiting to get the city
into a snarl, and then rob the houses — pack of dirty,
worthless whelps. They ought to call out the
militia, and fire into 'em. Clubbing is too good for
them." Conrad was still silent, and his father
sneered, "But I reckon you don't think so."

" I think the strike is useless," said Conrad.

" Oh, you do, do you ? Comin' to your senses a
little. Gettin' tired walkin' so much. I should like
to know what your gentlemen over there on the East
side think about the strike, anyway."

The young fellow dropped his eyes. " I am not
authorised to speak for them."

"Oh, indeed! And perhaps you're not author-
ised to speak for yourself 1 "

" Father, you know we don't agree about these
things. I'd rather not talk "

" But I 'm goin' to make you talk this time ! "
cried Dryfoos, striking the arm of the chair he sat
in with the side of his fist. A maddening thought
of Christine came over him. " As long as you eat
my bread, you have got to do as I say. I won't
have my children telling me what I shall do and
sha'n't do, or take on airs of being holier than me.
10*

226 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

Now, you just speak up ! Do you think those
loafers are right, or don't you 1 Come ! "

Conrad apparently judged it best to speak. " I
think they were very foolish to strike — at this time,
when the elevated roads can do the work."

" Oh, at this time, heigh ! And I suppose they
think over there on the East side that it 'd been wise
to strike before we got the elevated." Conrad again
refused to answer, and his father roared, " What do
you think ? "

" I think a strike is always bad business. It '&
war ; but sometimes there don't seem any other
way for the working men to get justice. They say
that sometimes strikes do raise the wages, after a
while."

" Those lazy devils were paid enough already,"
shrieked the old man. " They got two dollars a
day. How much do you think they ought to 'a' got ?
Twenty ? "

Conrad hesitated, with a beseeching look at his
father. But he decided to answer. " The men say
that with partial work, and fines, and other things,
they get sometimes a dollar, and sometimes ninety
cents a day."

" They lie, and you know they lie," said his father,
rising and coming toward him. " And what do you
think the upshot of it all will be, after they've
ruined business for another week, and made people
hire hacks, and stolen the money of honest men ?
How is it going to end ? "

"They will have to give in."

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 227

" Oh, give in, heigh ! And what will you say
then, I should like to know 1 How will you feel about
it then 1 Speak ! "

" I shall feel as I do now. I know you don't
think that way, and I don't blame you — or any-
body. But if I have got to say how I shall feel,
why, I shall feel sorry they didn't succeed, for I
believe they have a righteous cause, though they go
the wrong way to help themselves."

His father came close to him, his eyes blazing, his
teeth set. " Do you dare to say that to me ? "

" Yes. I can't help it. I pity them ; my whole
heart is with those poor men."

" You impudent puppy ! " shouted the old man.
He lifted his hand and struck his son in the face.
Conrad caught his hand with his own left, and while
the blood began to trickle from a wound that
Christine's intaglio ring had made in his temple, he
looked at him with a kind of grieving wonder, and
said, " Father ! "

The old man wrenched his fist away, and ran out
of the house. He remembered his address now,
and he gave it as he plunged into the coup6. He
trembled with his evil passion, and glared out of the
windows at the passers as he drove home ; he only
saw Conrad's mild grieving, wondering eyes, and the
biood slowly trickling from the wound in his temple.

Conrad went to the neat set-bowl in Fulkerson's
comfortable room, and washed the blood away, and
kept bathing the wound with the cold water till it
stopped bleeding. The cut was not deep, and he

228 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

thought he would not put anything on it. After a
while he locked up the office, and started out, he
hardly knew where. But he walked on, in the
direction he had taken, till he found himself in
Union Square, on the pavement in front of Brentano's.
It seemed to him that he heard some one calling
gently to him, " Mr. Dryfoos ! "

V.

CONRAD looked confusedly around, and the same
voice said again, " Mr. Dryfoos ! " and he saw that
it was a lady speaking to him from a coup6 beside
the curbing, and then he saw that it was Miss Vance.

She smiled when he gave signs of having dis-
covered her, and came up to the door of Ler carriage.
" I am so glad to meet you. I have been longing to
talk to somebody ; nobody seems to feel about it
as I do. Oh, isn't it horrible ? Must they fail ] I
saw cars running on all the lines as I came across ;
it made me sick at heart. Must those brave fellows
give in 1 And everybody seems to hate them so — I
can't bear it." Her face was estranged with excite-
ment, and there were traces of tears on it. " You
must think me almost crazy to stop you in the street
this way ; but when I caught sight of you I had to
speak. I knew you would sympathise — I knew you
would feel as I do. Oh, how can anybody help
honouring those poor men for standing by one
another as they do ? They are risking all they have
in the world for the sake of justice ! Oh, they are
true heroes ! They are staking the bread of their
wives and children on the dreadful chance they 've

230 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

taken ! But no one seems to understand it. No
one seems to see that they are willing to suffer more
now that other poor men may suffer less hereafter.
And those wretched creatures that are coming in to
take their places — those traitors "

" We can't blame them for wanting to earn a
living, Miss Vance," said Conrad.

" No, no ! I don't blame them. Who am I, to do
such a thing ? It 's we — people like me, of my class
— who make the poor betray one another. But this
dreadful fighting — this hideous paper is full of it ? "
She held up an extra, crumpled with her nervous
reading. " Can't something be done to stop it 1
Don't you think that if some one went among them,
and tried to make them see how perfectly hopeless
it was to resist the companies, and drive off the new
men, he might do some good ? I have wanted to
go and try ; but I am a woman, and I mustn't ! I
shouldn't be afraid of the strikers, but I'm afraid
of what people would say ! " Conrad kept pressing
his handkerchief to the cut in his temple, which he
thought might be bleeding, and now she noticed
this. " Are you hurt, Mr. Dryfoos 1 You look so
pale."

" No, it 's nothing — a little scratch I 've got."

"Indeed you look pale. Have you a carriage?
How will you get home 1 Will you get in here with
me, and let me drive you ? "

" No, no," said Conrad, smiling at her excitement.
" I 'm perfectly well "

"And you don't think I'm foolish and wicked for

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 231

stopping you here, and talking in this way ? But
I know you feel as I do ! "

"Yes, I feel as you do. You are right — right in
every way — I mustn't keep you — Good-bye." He
stepped back to bow, but she put her beautiful hand
out of the window, and when he took it she wrung
his hand hard.

" Thank you, thank you ! You are good and you
are just ! But no one can do anything. It's useless ! "

The type of irreproachable coachman on the box
whose respectability had suffered through the
strange behaviour of his mistress in this inter-
view, drove quickly off at her signal, and Conrad
stood a moment looking after the carriage. His
heart was full of joy ; it leaped ; he thought it
would burst. As he turned to walk away it
seemed to him as if he mounted upon the air. The
trust she had shown him, the praise she had given
him ; that crush of the hand : he hoped nothing, he
formed no idea from it, but it all filled him with
love that cast out the pain and shame he had been
suffering. He believed that he could never be un-
happy any more ; the hardness that was in his mind
toward his father went out of it ; he saw how sorely
he had tried him ; he grieved that he had done it,
but the means, the difference of his feeling about the
cause of their quarrel, he was solemnly glad of that
since she shared it. He was only sorry for his father.
" Poor father ! " he said under his breath as he went
along. He explained to her about his father in his
reverie, and she pitied his father too.

232 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

He was walking over toward the West side, aim-
lessly at first, and then at times with the longing to
do something to save those mistaken ^men from
themselves forming itself into a purpose. Was not
that what she meant, when she bewailed her woman's
helplessness 1 She must have wished him to try,
if he, being a man, could not do something; or if
she did not, still he would try, and if she heard of
it, she would recall what she had said, and would
be glad he had understood her so. Thinking of
her pleasure in what he was going to do, he forgot
almost what it was ; but when he came to a street-
car track he remembered it, and looked up and
down to see if there were any turbulent gathering
of men, whom he might mingle with and help to
keep from violence. He saw none anyAvhere ; and
then suddenly, as if at the same moment, for in his
exalted mood all events had a dream-like simul-
taneity, he stood at the corner of an avenue, and in
the middle of it, a little way off, was a street-car,
and around the car a tumult of shouting, cursing,
struggling men. The driver was lashing his horses
forward, and a policeman was at their heads, with
the conductor, pulling them ; stones, clubs, brick-
bats hailed upon the car, the horses, the men
trying to move them. The mob closed upon
them in a body, and then a patrol-wagon whirled
up from the other side, and a squad of policemen
leaped out, and began to club the rioters. Conrad
could see how they struck them under the rims of
their hats ; the blows on their skulls sounded as if

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 233

they had fallen on stone ; the rioters ran in all
directions.

One of the officers rushed up toward the corner
where Conrad stood, and then he saw at his side a
tall old man with a long white beard. He was call-
ing out at the policeman : " Ah yes ! Glup the
strikerss — gif it to them ! Why don't you co and
glup the bresidents that insoalt your lawss, and gick
your Boart of Arpidration out-of-toors 1 Glup the
strikerss — they cot no friendts ! They cot no money
to pribe you, to dreat you ! "

The officer lifted his club, and the old man threw
his left arm up to shield his head. Conrad recog-
nised Lindau, and now he saw the empty sleeve
dangle in the air, over the stump of his wrist. He
heard a shot in that turmoil beside the car, and
something seemed to strike him in the breast. He
was going to say to the policeman, "Don't strike
him ! He's an old soldier ! You see he has no
hand !" but he could not speak, he could not move
his tongue. The policeman stood there ; he saw his
face : it was not bad, not cruel ; it was like the face
of a statue, fixed, perdurable ; a mere image of irre-
sponsible and involuntary authority. Then Conrad
fell forward, pierced through the heart by that shot
fired from the car.

March heard the shot as he scrambled out of his
car, and at the same moment he saw Lindau drop
under the club of the policeman, who left him where
he fell, and joined the rest of the squad in pursuing
the rioters. The fighting round the car in the

234 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

avenue ceased ; the driver whipped his horses into a
gallop, and the place was left empty.

March would have liked to run ; he thought how
his wife had implored him to keep away from the
rioting; but he could not have left Lindau lying
there if he would. Something stronger than his
will drew him to the spot, and there he saw Conrad
dead beside the old man.

VL

IN the cares which Mrs. March shared with her
husband that night she was supported partly by
principle, but mainly by the potent excitement
which bewildered Conrad's family and took all
reality from what had happened. It was nearly
midnight when the Marches left them and walked
away toward the elevated station with Fulkerson.
Everything had been done, by that time, that could
be done ; and Fulkerson was not without that satis-
faction in the business-like despatch of all the details
which attends each step in such an affair, and helps
to make death tolerable even to the most sorely
stricken. We are creatures of the moment ; we
live from one little space to another ; and only one
interest at a time fills these. Fulkerson was cheerful
when they got into the street, almost gay ; and Mrs.
March experienced a rebound from her depression
which she felt that she ought not to have experienced.
But she condoned the offence a little in herself, because
her husband remained so constant in his gravity ; and
pending the final accounting he must make her for
having been where he could be of so much use from
the first instant of the calamity, she was tenderly,

236 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

gratefully proud of all the use he had been to Conrad's
family, and especially his miserable old father. To
her mind March was the principal actor in the whole
affair, and much more important in having seen it
than those who had suffered in it. In fact, he had
suffered incomparably..

"Well, well," said Fulkerson. "They'll get
along now. We 've done all ice could, and there 's
nothing left but for them to bear it. Of course it 's
awful, but I guess it '11 come out all right. I mean,"
he added, " they '11 pull through now."

" I suppose," said March, " that nothing is put
on us that we can't bear. But I should think,"
he went on musingly, " that when God sees what
we poor finite creatures can bear, hemmed round
with this eternal darkness of death, He must respect
us."

" Basil ! " said his wife. But in her heart she
drew nearer to him for the words she thought she
ought to rebuke him for.

"Oh, I know," he said, "we school ourselves to
despise human nature. But God did not make us
despicable, and I say whatever end He meant us
for, He must have some such thrill of joy in our
adequacy to fate as a father feels when his son
shows himself a man. When I think what we can
be if we must, I can't believe the least of us shall
finally perish."

"Oh, I reckon the Almighty won't scoop any of
us," said Fulkerson, with a piety of his own.

" That poor boy's father ! " sighed Mrs. March.

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 237

" I can't get his face out of my sight. He looked so
much worse than death."

" Oh, death doesn't look bad," said March. " It 's
life that looks so in its presence. Death is peace
and pardon. I only wish poor old Lindau was as
well out of it as Conrad there."

"Ah, Lindau ! He has done harm enough," said
Mrs. March. " I hope he will be careful after this."

March did not try to defend Lindau against her
theory of the case, which inexorably held him re-
sponsible for Conrad's death.

" Lindau 's going to come out all right, I guess,"
said Fulkerson. " He was first-rate when I saw him
at the hospital to-night." He whispered in March's
ear, at a chance he got in mounting the station
stairs : " I didn't like to tell you there at the house,
but I guess you 'd better know. They had to take
Lindau's arm off near the shoulder. Smashed all to
pieces by the clubbing."

In the house, vainly rich and foolishly unfit for
them, the bereaved family Avhom the Marches had
just left lingered together, and tried to get strength
to part for the night. They were all spent with the
fatigue that comes from heaven to such misery as
theirs, and they sat in a torpor in which each waited
for the other to move, to speak.

Christine moved, and Mela spoke. Christine rose
and went out of the room without saying a word,
and they heard her going upstairs. Then Mela said,

" I reckon the rest of us better be goun' too, father.
Here, let 's git mother started."

238 A HAZARD OF XKW FORTUNES.

She put her arm round her mother, to lift her
from her chair, but the old man did not stir, and
Mela called Mrs. Mandel from the next room. Be-
tween them they raised her to her feet.

" Ain't there anybody a-goin' to set up with it ? "
she asked, in her hoarse pipe. " It appears like folks
hain't got any feelin's in New York. Woon't some
o' the neighbours come and offer to set up, without
waitin' to be asked ?"

" Oh, that 's all right, mother. The men '11 attend
to that. Don't yon bother any," Mela coaxed, and
she kept her arm round her mother, with tender
patience.

" Why, Mely, child ! I can't feel right to have it
left to hirelin's, so. But there ain't anybody any
more to see things done as they ought. If Coonrod
was on'y here "

" Well, mother, you are pretty mixed ! " said
Mela, with a strong tendency to break into her large
guffaw. But she checked herself and said, " I know
just how you feel, though. It keeps a-comun' and
a-goun' ; and it 's so and it ain't so, all at once ;
that's the plague of it. Well, father! Ain't you
goun' to come 1 '

" I 'm goin' to stay, Mela," said the old man gently,
without moving. " Get your mother to bed, that 's
a good girl."

" You goin' to set up with him, Jacob ? " asked the
old woman.

"Yes, 'Liz'beth, I '11 set up. You go to bed."

" Well, I will, Jacob. And I believe it '11 do you

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 239

good to set up. I wished I could set up with you ;
but I don't seem to have the stren'th I did when the

twins died. I must git my sleep, so 's to 1 don't

like very well to have you broke of your rest, Jacob,
but there don't appear to be anybody else. You
wouldn't have to do it if Coonrod was here. There
I go ag'in ! Mercy ! mercy ! "

"Well, do come along, then, mother," said Mela;
and she got her out of the room, with Mrs. Mandel's
help, and up the stairs.

From the top the old woman called down : " You
tell Coonrod — She stopped, and he heard her

groan out, "My Lord ! my Lord !"

He sat, one silence in the dining-room, where they
had all lingered together, and in the library beyond
the hireling watcher sat, another silence. The time
passed, but neither moved, and the last noise in the
house ceased, so that they heard each other breathe,
and the vague, remote rumour of the city invaded the
inner stillness. It grew louder toward morning, and
then Dryfoos knew from the watcher's deeper
breathing that he had fallen into a doze.

He crept by him to the drawing-room, where his
son was; the place was full of the awful sweetness
of the flowers that Fulkerson had brought, and that
lay above the pulseless breast. The old man turned
up a burner in the chandelier, and stood looking on
the majestic serenity of the dead face.

He could not move when he saw his wife coming
down the stairway in the hall. She was in her long
white flannel bedgown, and the candle she carried
2P

240 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

shook with her nervous tremor. He thought she
might be walking in her sleep, but she said, quite
simply, " I woke up, and I couldn't git to sleep ag'in
without comin' to have a look." She stood beside
their dead son with him. " Well, he 's beautiful,
Jacob. He was the prettiest baby ! And he was
always good, Coonrod was ; I '11 say that for him.
I don't believe he ever give me a minute's care in
his whole life. I reckon I liked him about the best
of all the childern ; but I don't know as I ever done
much to show it. But you was always good to him,
Jacob ; you always done the best for him, ever since
he was a little feller. I used to be afraid you 'd spoil
him sometimes in them days ; but I guess you 're glad
now for every time you didn't cross him. I don't
suppose since the twins died you ever hit him a
lick." She stooped and peered closer at the face.
" Why, Jacob, what's that there by his pore eye 7 "
Dryfoos saw it too, the wound that he had feared
to look for, and that now seemed to redden on his
sight. He broke into a low, wavering cry, like a
child's in despair, like an animal's in terror, like a
soul's in the anguish of remorse.

VII.

THE evening after the funeral, while the Marches
sat together talking it over, and making approaches,
through its shadow, to the question of their own
future, which it involved, they were startled by the
twitter of the electric bell at their apartment door.
It was really not so late as the children's having
gone to bed made it seem ; but at nine o'clock it was

Ltoo late for any probable visitor except Fulkerson.
It might be he, and March was glad to postpone the
impending question to his curiosity concerning the
immediate business Fulkerson might have with him.
He went himself to the door, and confronted there
a lady deeply veiled in black, and attended by a
very decorous serving-woman.

"Are you alone, Mr. March — you and Mrs.
March ? " asked the lady, behind her veil ; and as he
hesitated, she said, " You don't know me ! Miss
Vance ; " and she threw back her veil, showing her
face wan and agitated in the dark folds. "I am
very anxious to see you — to speak with you both.
May I come in 1 "

" Why, certainly, Miss Vance," he answered, still
too much stupefied by her presence to realise it.
VOL, It— U

242 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

She promptly entered, and saying, \vith a glance
at the hall chair by the door, "My maid can sit
here 1 " followed him to the room where he had left
his wife.

Mrs. March showed herself more capable of coping
with the fact. She welcomed Miss Vance with the
liking they both felt for the girl, and with the
sympathy which her troubled face inspired.

" I won't tire you with excuses for coming, Mrs.
March," she said, " for it was the only thing left for
me to do ; and I come at my aunt's suggestion."
She added this as if it would help to account for her
more on the conventional plane, and she had the
instinctive good taste to address herself throughout
to Mrs. March as much as possible, though what she
had to say was mainly for March. " I don't know
how to begin — I don't know how to speak of this
terrible affair. • But you know what I mean. I feel
as if I had lived a whole lifetime since it — happened.
I don't want you to pity me for it," she said, fore-
stalling a politeness from Mrs. March. " I 'm the
last one to be thought of, and you mustn't mind me
if I try to make you. I came to find out all of the
truth that I can, and when I know just what that is
I shall know what to do. I have read the inquest ;
it 's all burnt into my brain. But I don't care for
that — for myself : you must let me say such things
without minding me. I know that your husband —
that Mr. March was there; I read his testimony;

and I wished to ask him — to ask him " She

stopped and looked distractedly about. " But what

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 243

folly ! He must have said everything he knew — he
had to." Her eyes wandered to him from his wife,
on whom she had kept them with instinctive tact.

"I said everything — yes," he replied. "But if
you would like to know —

"Perhaps I had better tell you something first.
I had just parted with him — it couldn't have been
more than half an hour — in front of Brentano's ; he
must have gone straight to his death. We were
talking, and I — I said, Why didn't some one go
among the strikers and plead with them to be peace-
able, and keep them from attacking the new men.
I knew that he felt as I did about the strikers;
that he was their friend. Did you see — do you
know anything that makes you think he had been
trying to do that?"

"I am sorry," March began, "I didn't see him at
all till — till I saw him lying dead."

"My husband was there purely by accident,"
Mrs. March put in. " I had begged and entreated
him not to go near the striking anywhere. And he
had just got out of the car, and saw the policeman
strike that wretched Lindau — he 's been such an
anxiety to me ever since we have had anything to
do with him here ; my husband knew him when he
was a boy in the West. Mr. March came home
from it all perfectly prostrated ; it made us all sick !
Nothing so horrible ever came into our lives before.
I assure you it was the most shocking experience."

Miss Vance listened to her with that look of
patience which those who have seen much of the

244 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

real suffering of the world — the daily portion of the
poor — have for the nervous woes of comfortable
people. March hung his head; he knew it would
be useless to protest that his share of the calamity
was, by comparison, infinitesimally small.

After she had heard Mrs. March to the end even
of her repetitions, Miss Vance said, as if it were a
mere matter of course that she should have looked
the affair up, " Yes, I have seen Mr. Lindau at the
hospital "

" My husband goes every day to see him," Mrs.
March interrupted, to give a final touch to the con-
ception of March's magnanimity throughout.

" The poor man seems to have been in the wrong
at the time," said Miss Vance.

"I could almost say he had earned the right to
be wrong. He 's a man of the most generous in-
stincts, and a high ideal of justice, of equity — too
high to be considered by a policeman with a club
in his hand," said March, with a bold defiance of his
wife's different opinion of Lindau. "It's the police-
man's business, I suppose, to club the ideal when he
finds it inciting a riot."

"Oh, I don't blame Mr. Lindau; I don't blame
the policeman ; he was as much a mere instrument
as his club was. I am only trying to find out how
much I am to blame myself. I had no thought of
Mr. Dryfoos's going there — of his attempting to talk
with the strikers and keep them quiet ; I was only
thinking, as women do, of what I should try to do
if I were a man. But perhaps he understood me to

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 245

ask him to go — perhaps my words sent him to his
death."

She had a sort of calm in her courage to know
the worst truth as to her responsibility that forbade
any wish to flatter her out of it. "I'm afraid,"
said March, "that is what can never be known
now." After a moment he added, " But why should
you wish to know ? If he went there as a peace-
maker, he died in a good cause, in such a way as he
would wish to die, I believe."

" Yes," said the girl ; " I have thought of that.
But death is awful ; we must not think patiently,
forgivingly of sending any one to their death in the
best cause."

"I fancy life was an awful thing to Conrad
Dryfoos," March replied. "He was thwarted and
disappointed, without even pleasing the ambition
that thwarted and disappointed him. That poor old
man, his father, warped him from his simple, life-
long wish to be a minister, and was trying to make
a business-man of him. If it will be any consolation
to you to know it, Miss Vance, I can assure you
that he was very unhappy, and I don't see how he
could ever have been happy here."

"It won't," said the girl steadily. "If people
are born into this world, it 's because they were
meant to live in it. It isn't a question of being
happy here ; no one is happy, in that old selfish way,
or can be ; but he could have been of great use."

" Perhaps he was of use in dying. Who knows ?
He may have been trying to silence Lindau."

246 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

" Oh, Lindau wasn't worth it ! " cried Mrs. March.

Miss Vance looked at her as if she did not quite
understand. Then she turned to March. " He
might have been unhappy, as we all are; but I
know that his life here would have had a higher
happiness than we wish for or aim for." The tears
began to run silently down her cheeks.

" He looked strangely happy that day when he
left me. He had hurt himself somehow, and his face
was bleeding from a scratch ; he kept his handkerchief
up ; he was pale, but such a light came into his face
when he shook hands — ah, I know he went to try
and do what I said ! " They were all silent, while
she dried her eyes and then put her handkerchief
back into the pocket from which she had suddenly
pulled it, with a series of vivid, young-ladyish ges-
tures, which struck March by their incongruity with
the occasion of their talk, and yet by their harmony
with the rest of her elegance. " I am sorry, Miss
Vance," he began, " that I can't really tell you any-
thing more "

" You are very kind," she ..said, controlling herself
and rising quickly. " I thank you — thank you both
very much." She turned to Mrs. March and shook
hands with her and then with him. " I might have
known — I did know that there wasn't anything more
for you to tell. But at least I 've found out from
you that there was nothing, and now I can begin to
bear what I must. How are those poor creatures
— his mother and father, his sisters 1 Some day,
I hope, I shall be ashamed to have postponed

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 247

them to the thought of myself ; but I can't pre-
tend to be yet. I could not come to the funeral ; I
wanted to."

She addressed her question to Mrs. March, who
answered : " I can understand. But they were
pleased with the flowers you sent; people are, at
such times, and they haven't many friends."

" Would you go to see them ? " asked the girl.
" Would you tell them what I Ve told you ? "

Mrs. March looked at her husband.

"I don't see what good it would do. They
wouldn't understand. But if it would relieve

you "

" I '11 wait till it isn't a question of self-relief,"
said the girl. " Good-bye ! "

She left them to long debate of the event. At
the end Mrs. March said, " She is a strange being ;
such a mixture of the society girl and the saint."

Her husband answered : " She 's the potentiality
of several kinds of fanatic. She's very unhappy,
and I don't see how she 's to be happier about that
poor fellow. I shouldn't be surprised if she did
inspire him to attempt something of that kind."

" Well, you got out of it very well, Basil. I
admired the way you managed. I was afraid you 'd
say something awkward."

" Oh, with a plain line of truth before me, as the
only possible thing, I can get on pretty well. When
it comes to anything decorative, I 'd rather leave it
to you, Isabel."

She seemed insensible of his jest. " Of course he

248 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

was in love with her. That was the light that came

into his face when he was going to do what he

thought she wanted him to do."

" And she — do you think that she was "

" What an idea ! It wcuM have been perfectly

grotesque ! "

vm.

THEIR affliction brought the Dryfooses into
humaner relations with the Marches, who had
hitherto regarded them as a necessary evil, as the
odious means of their own prosperity. Mrs. March
found that the women of the family seemed glad of
her coming, and in the sense of her usefulness to them
all she began to feel a kindness even for Christine.
But she could not help seeing that between the girl
and her father there was an unsettled account, some-
how, and that it was Christine and not the old man
who was holding out. She thought that their sorrow
had tended to refine the others. Mela was much
more subdued, and except when she abandoned her-
self to a childish interest in her mourning, she did
nothing to shock Mrs. March's taste, or to seem
unworthy of her grief. She was very good to her
mother, whom the blow had left unchanged, and to
her father, whom it had apparently fallen upon with
crushing weight. Once, after visiting their house,
Mrs. March described to March a little scene between
Dryfoos and Mela, when he came home from Wall
Street, and the girl met him at the door with a kind
of country simpleness, and took his hat and stick,
11*

250 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

and brought him into the room where Mrs. March
sat, looking tired and broken.

She found this look of Dryfoos's pathetic, and
dwelt on the sort of stupefaction there was in it;
he must have loved his son more than they ever
realised. "Yes," said March, "I suspect he did.
He 's never been about the place since that day ; he
was always dropping in before, on his way uptown.
He seems to go down to Wall Street every day, jusfc
as before, but I suppose that 's mechanical ; he
wouldn't know what else to do ; I dare say it 's best
for him. The sanguine Fulkerson is getting a little
anxious about the future of Every Other Week. Xow
Conrad 's gone, he isn't sure the old man will want
to keep on with it, or whether he '11 have to look up
another Angel. He wants to get married, I imagine,
and he can't venture till this point is settled."

" It 's a very material point to us, too, Basil," said
Mrs. March.

"Well, of course. I hadn't overlooked that, you
may be sure. One of the things that Fulkerson and
I have discussed is a scheme for buying the magazine.
Its success is pretty well assured now, and I shouldn't
be afraid to put money into it — if I had the money."

" I couldn't let you sell the house in Boston, Basil !"

"And I don't want to. I wish we could go back
and live in it, and get the rent too ! It would be
quite a support. But I suppose if Dryfoos won't
keep on, it must come to another Angel. I hope it
won't be a literary one, with a fancy for running my
department."

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 251

" Oh, I guess whoever takes the magazine will be
glad enough to keep you ! "

" Do you think so 1 Well, perhaps. But I don't
believe Fulkerson would let me stand long between
him and an Angel of the right description."

"Well, then, I believe he would. And you've
never seen anything, Basil, to make you really think
that Mr. Fulkerson didn't appreciate you to the
utmost."

" I think I came pretty near an undervaluation in
that Lindau trouble. I shall always wonder what put
a backbone into Fulkerson, just at that crisis. Fulker-
son doesn't strike me as the stuff of a moral hero."

"At any rate, he was one," said Mrs. March, "and
that's quite enough for me."

March did not answer. " What a noble thing life
is, anyway ! Here I am, well on the way to fifty,
after twenty-five years of hard work, looking forward
to the potential poor-house as confidently as I did in
youth. We might have saved a little more than we
have saved ; but the little more wouldn't avail if I
were turned out of my place now ; and we should
have lived sordidly to no purpose. Some one
always has you by the throat, unless you have some
one else in your grip. I wonder if that 's the attitude
the Almighty intended his respectable creatures to
take toward one another ! I wonder if he meant
our civilisation, the battle we fight in, the game we
trick in ! I wonder if he considers it final, and if
the kingdom of heaven on earth, which we pray
for "

252 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

" Have you seen Lindau to-day ? " Mrs. March
asked.

"You inferred it from the quality of my piety 1"
March laughed, and then suddenly sobered. "Yes,
I saw him. It's going rather hard with him, I'm
afraid. The amputation doesn't heal very well ;
the shock was very great, and he 's old. It '11 take
time. There 's so much pain that they have to keep
him under opiates, and I don't think he fully knew
me. At any rate, I didn't get my piety from him
to-day."

" It 's horrible ! Horrible ! " said Mrs. March.
" I can't get over it ! After losing his hand in the
war, to lose his whole arm now in this way ! It
does seem too cruel ! Of course he oughtn't to have
been there ; we can say that. But you oughtn't to
have been there either, Basil."

" Well, I wasn't exactly advising the police to go
and club the railroad presidents."

"Neither was poor Conrad Dryfoos."

"I don't deny it. All that was distinctly the
chance of life and death. That belonged to God;
and no doubt it was law, though it seems chance.
But what I object to is this economic chance-world
in which we live, and which we men seem to have
created. It ought to be law as inflexible in human
affairs as the order of day and night in the physical
world, that if a man will work he. shall both rest
and eat, and shall not be harassed with any question
as to how his repose and his provision shall come.
Nothing less ideal than this satisfies the reason.

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 253

But in our state of things no one is secure of this.
No one is sure of finding work ; no one is sure of
not losing it. I may have my work taken away
from me at any moment by the caprice, the mood,
the indigestion of a man who has not the qualifica-
tion for knowing whether I do it well or ill. At
my time of life — at every time of life — a man ought
to feel that if he will keep on doing his duty he
shall not suffer in himself or in those who are dear
to him, except through natural causes. But no man
can feel this as things are now ; and so we go on,
pushing and pulling, climbing and crawling, thrust-
ing aside and trampling underfoot ; lying, cheating,
stealing ; and when we get to the end, covered with
blood and dirt and sin and shame, and look back
over the way we Ve come to a palace of our own, or
the poor-house, which is about the only possession
we can claim in common with our brother-men, I
don't think the retrospect can be pleasing."

" I know, I know ! " said his wife. " I think of
those things too, Basil. Life isn't what it seems
when you look forward to it. But I think people
would suffer less, and wouldn't have to work so
hard, and could make all reasonable provision for
the future, if they were not so greedy and so
foolish."

" Oh, without doubt ! We can't put it all on the
conditions ; we must put some of the blame on
character. But conditions make character ; and
people are greedy and foolish, and wish to have and
to shine, because having and shining are held up to

254 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

them by civilisation as the chief good of life. We
all know they are not the chief good, perhaps not
good at all ; but if some one ventures to say so, all
the rest of us call him a fraud and a crank, and go
moiling and toiling on to the palace or the poor-
house. We can't help it. If one were less greedy,
or less foolish, some one else would have, and would
shine at his expense. We don't moil and toil to our-
selves alone ; the palace or the poor-house is not
merely for ourselves, but for our children, whom we've
brought up in the superstition that having and shining
is the chief good. We dare not teach them otherwise,
for fear they may falter in the fight, when it comes
their turn ; and the children of others will crowd
them out of the palace into the poor-house. If we
felt sure that honest work shared by all would bring
them honest food shared by all, some heroic few of
us, who did not wish our children to rise above their
fellows — though we could not bear to have them fall
below — might trust them with the truth. But we
have no such assurance ; and so we go on trembling
before Dryfooses, and living in gimcrackeries."

" Basil, Basil ! I was always willing to live more
simply than you. You know I was ! "

" I know you always said so, my dear. But how
many bell-ratchets and speaking-tubes would you
be willing to have at the street door below 1 I re-
member that when we were looking for a flat you
rejected every building that had a bell-ratchet or a
speaking-tube, and would have nothing to do with
any that had more than an electric button ; you

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 255

wanted a hall-boy, with electric buttons all over him.
I don't blame you. I find such things quite as
necessaiy as you do."

" And do you mean to say, Basil," she asked,
abandoning this unprofitable branch of the inquiry,
" that you are really uneasy about your place ? that
you are afraid Mr. Dryfoos may give up being an
Angel, and Mr. Fulkerson may play you false ? "

" Play me false 1 Oh, it wouldn't be playing me
false. It would be merely looking out for himself,
if the new Angel had editorial tastes, and wanted
my place. It 's what any one would do."

" You wouldn't do it, Basil ! "

" Wouldn't 1 1 Well, if any one offered me more
salary than Every Other Week pays — say twice as
much — what do you think my duty to my suffering
family would be ? It 's give and take in the business
world, Isabel ; especially take. But as to being
uneasy, I 'm not, in the least. I Ve the spirit of a
lion, when it comes to such a chance as that. When
I see how readily the sensibilities of the passing
stranger can be worked in New York, I think of
taking up the rdle of that desperate man on Third
Avenue, who went along looking for garbage in the
gutter to eat. I think I could pick up at least
twenty or thirty cents a day by that little game,
and maintain my family in the affluence it's been
accustomed to."

"Basil!" cried his wife. "You don't mean to
say that man was an impostor ! And I Ve gone
about, ever since, feeling that one such case in a
2Q

256 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

million, the bare possibility of it, was enough to
justify all that Lindau said about the rich and the
poor ! "

March laughed teasingly. "Oh, I don't say he
was an impostor. Perhaps he really was hungry ;
but if he wasn't, what do you think of a civilisation
that makes the opportunity of such a fraud 1 that
gives us all such a bad conscience for the need which
is, that we weaken to the need that isn't ? Suppose
that poor fellow wasn't personally founded on fact :
nevertheless, he represented the truth ; he was the
ideal of the suffering which would be less effective if
realistically treated. That man is a great comfort
to me. He probably rioted for days on that quarter
I gave him ; made a dinner very likely, or a cham-
pagne supper ; and if Every Other Week wants to get
rid of me, I intend to work that racket. You can
hang round the corner with Bella, and Tom can
come up to me in tears, at stated intervals, and ask
me if I Ve found anything yet. To be sure, we
might be arrested and sent up somewhere. But
even in that extreme case we should be provided
for. Oh no, I 'm not afraid of losing my place !
I've merely a sort of psychological curiosity to
know how men like Dryfoos and Fulkerson will
work out the problem before them."

IX.

IT was a curiosity which Fulkerson himself
shared, at least concerning Dryloos. " I don't know
what the old man 's going to do," he said to March,
the day after the Marches had talked their future
over. " Said anything to you yet 1 "

" No, not a word."

" You 're anxious, I suppose, same as I am. Fact
is," said Fulkerson, blushing a little, " I can't ask to
have a day named till I know where I am in con-
^ nection with the old man. I can't tell whether I ;ve
got to look out for something else, or somebody else.
Of course, it's full soon yet."

" Yes," March said, " much sooner than it seems
to us. "We 're so anxious about the future that we
don't remember how very recent the past is."

"That's something so. The old man's hardly
had time yet to pull himself together. Well, I'm
glad you feel that way about it, March. I guess it 's
more of a blow to him than we realise. He was a
good deal bound up in Coonrod, though he didn't
always use him very well. Well, I reckon it 's apt to
happen so oftentimes ; curious how cruel love can
be. Heigh ? We 're an awful mixture, March ! "

258 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

" Yes, that 's the marvel and the curse, as Brown-
ing says."

" Why, that poor boy himself," pursued Fulker-
son, "had streaks of the mule in him that could
give odds to Beaton, and he must have tried the old
man by the way he would give in to his will, and
hold out against his judgment. I don't believe he
ever budged a hair's-breadth from his original posi-
tion about wanting to be a preacher and not want-
ing to be a business man. Well, of course ! / don't
think business is all in all ; but it must have made
the old man mad to find that without saying any-
thing, or doing anything to show it, and after seem-
ing to come over to his ground, and really coming,
practically, Coonrod was just exactly where he first
planted himself, every time."

" Yes, people that have convictions are difficult.
Fortunately, they 're rare."

" Do you think so 1 It seems to me that every-
body 's got convictions. Beaton himself, who hasn't
a principle to throw at a dog, has got convictions the
size of a barn. They ain't always the same ones, I
know, but they 're always to the same effect, as far
as Beaton's being Number One is concerned. The
old man 's got convictions — or did have, unless this
thing lately has shaken him all up — and he believes
that money will do everything. Colonel Woodburn 's
got convictions that he wouldn't part with for untold
millions. Why, March, you got convictions yourself !"

" Have I ? " said March. " I don't know what
they are."

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 259

" Well, neither do I ; but I know you were ready
to kick the trough over for them when the old man
wanted us to bounce Lindau that time."

" Oh yes," said March ; he remembered the fact ;
but he was still uncertain just what the convictions
were that he had been so staunch for.

" I suppose we could have got along without you,"
Fulkerson mused aloud. " It 's astonishing how you
always can get along in this world without the man
that is simply indispensable. Makes a fellow realise
that he could take a day off now and then without
deranging the solar system a great deal. Now here 's,
Coonrod — or rather, he isn't. But that boy managed
his part of the schooner so well that I used to
tremble when I thotight of his getting the better of
the old man, and going into a convent or something
of that kind ; and now here he is, snuffed out in
half a second, and I don't believe but what we shall
be sailing along just as chipper as usual inside of
thirty days. I reckon it will bring the old man to
the point when I come to talk with him about who 's
to be put in Coonrod's place. I don't like very well
to start the subject with him ; but it 's got to be
done some time."

" Yes," March admitted. " It 's terrible to think
how unnecessary even the best and wisest of us is to-
the purposes of Providence. When I looked at that
poor young fellow's face sometimes — so gentle and
true and pure — I used to think the world was appre-
ciably richer for his being in it. But are we appre-
ciably poorer for his being out of it now ? "

260 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

"No, I don't reckon we are," said Fulkerson.
"And what a lot of the raw material of all kinds
the Almighty must have, to waste us the way he
seems to do. Think of throwing away a precious
creature like Coonrod Dryfoos on one chance in a
thousand of getting that old fool of a Lindau out of
the way of being clubbed ! For I suppose that was
what Coonrod was up to. Say ! Have you been
round to see Lindau to-day 1 "

Something in the tone or the manner of Fulkerson
startled March. " No ! I haven't seen him since
yesterday."

" Well, I don't know," said Fulkerson. " I guess
I saw him a little while after you did, and that
young doctor there seemed to feel kind of worried
about him. Or not worried, exactly ; they can't
afford to let such things worry them, I suppose;
but "

" He 's worse ? " asked March.

"Oh, he didn't say so. But I just wondered if
you 'd seen him to-day."

" I think I '11 go now," said March, with a pang
at heart. He had gone every day to see Lindau, but
this day he had thought he would not go, and that
was why his heart smote him. He knew that if he
were in Lindau's place Lindau would never have left
his side if he could have helped it. March tried to
believe that the case was the same, as it stood now ;
it seemed to him that he was always going to or
from the hospital ; he said to himself that it must
do Lindau harm to be visited so much. But he

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 261

knew that this was not true when he was met at the
door of the ward where Lindau lay by the young
doctor, who had come to feel a personal interest in
March's interest in Lindau.

He smiled without gaiety, and said, " He 's just
going."

" What ! Discharged f "

" Oh no. He has been failing very fast since you

saw him yesterday, and now " They had been

walking softly and talking softly down the aisle
between the long rows of beds. " Would you care
to see him ? "

The doctor made a slight gesture toward the
white canvas screen which in such places forms the
death-chamber of the poor and friendless. "Come
round this way — he won't know you ! 1 've got
rather fond of the poor old fellow. He wouldn't
have a clergyman — sort of agnostic, isn't he 1 A
good many of these Germans are — but the young
lady who 's been coming to see him "

They both stopped. Lindau's grand, patriarchal
head, foreshortened to their view, lay white upon
the pillow, and his broad white beard flowed out
over the sheet, which heaved with those long last
breaths. Beside his bed Margaret Vance was kneel-
ing ; her veil was thrown back, and her face was
lifted; she held clasped between her hands the
hand of the dying man; she moved her lips in-
audibly.

IN spite of the experience of the whole race from
time immemorial, when death comes to any one we
know we helplessly regard it as an incident of life,
which will presently go on as before. Perhaps this
is an instinctive perception of the truth that it does
go on somewhere ; but we have a sense of death as
absolutely the end even for earth, only if it relates
to some one remote or indifferent to us. March
tried to project Lindau to the necessary distance
from himself in order to realise the fact in his case,
but he could not, though the man with whom his
youth had been associated in a poetic friendship had
not actually re-entered the region of his affection to
the same degree, or in any like degree. The changed
conditions forbade that. He had a soreness of heart
concerning him ; but he could not make sure whether
this soreness was grief for his death, or remorse for
his own uncandour with him about Dryfoos, or a
foreboding of that accounting with his conscience
which he knew his wife would now exact of him
down to the last minutest particular of their joint
and several behaviour toward Lindau ever since they
had met him in New York.

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 263

He felt something knock against his shoulder, and
he looked up to have his hat struck from his head
by a horse's nose. He saw the horse put his foot on
the hat, and he reflected, " Now it will always look
like an accordion," and he heard the horse's driver
address him some sarcasms before he could fully
awaken to the situation. He was standing bare-
headed in the middle of Fifth Avenue, and blocking
the tide of carriages flowing in either direction.
Among the faces put out of the carriage windows
he saw that of Dryfoos looking from a coupe". The
old man knew him, and said, " Jump in here, Mr.
March " ; and March, who had mechanically picked
up his hat, and was thinking, " Now I shall have to
tell Isabel about this at once, and she will never trust
me on the street again without her," mechanically
obeyed. Her confidence in him had been undermined
by his being so near Conrad when he was shot ; and
it went through his mind that he would get Dryfoos
to drive him to a hatter's, where he could buy a
new hat, and not be obliged to confess his narrow
escape to his wife till the incident was some days
old and she could bear it better. It quite drove
Lindau's death out of his mind for the moment ;
and when Dryfoos said if he was going home he
would drive up to the first cross-street and turn back
with him, March said he would be glad if he would
take him to a hat-store. The old man put his head
out again and told the driver to take them to the
Fifth Avenue Hotel. " There 's a hat-store around
there somewhere, seems to me," he said ; and they

264 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

talked of March's accident as well as they could in
the rattle and clatter of the street till they reached
the place. March got his hat, passing a joke with
the hatter about the impossibility of pressing his old
hat over again, and came out to thank Dryfoos and
take leave of him.

"If you ain't in any great hurry," the old man
said, " I wish you 'd get in here a minute. I 'd like
to have a little talk with you."

"Oh, certainly," said March, and he thought:
" It 's coming now about what he intends to do with
Every Other Week. Well, I might as well have all
the misery at once and have it over."

Dryfoos called up to his driver, who bent his head
down sidewise to listen : " Go over there on Madison
Avenue, onto that asphalte, and keep drivin' up and
down till I stop you. I can't hear myself think on
these pavements," he said to March. But after they
got upon the asphalte, and began smoothly rolling
over it, he seemed in no haste to begin. At last he
said, " I wanted to talk with you about that — that
Dutchman that was at my dinner — Lindau," and
March's heart gave a jump with wonder whether he
could have already heard of Lindau's death ; but in
an instant he perceived that this was impossible.
"I been talkin' with Fulkerson about him, and he
says they had to take the balance of his arm off."

March nodded ; it seemed to him he could not
speak. He could not make out from the close face
of the old man anything of his motive. It was set,
but set as a piece of broken mechanism is when it

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 265

has lost the power to relax itself. There was no
other history in it of what the man had passed
through in his son's death.

" I don't know," Dryfoos resumed, looking aside
at the cloth window-strap, which he kept fingering,
" as you quite understood what made me the maddest.
I didn't tell him I could talk Dutch, because I can't
keep it up with a regular German ; but my father
wa.s Pennsylvany Dutch, and I could understand
what he was saying to you about me. I know I had
no business to understood it, after I let him think I
couldn't ; but I did, and I didn't like very well to
have a man callin' me a traitor and a tyrant at my
own table. Well, I look at it differently now, and I
reckon I had better have tried to put up with it ; and

I would, if I could have known " He stopped

with a quivering lip, and then went on. "Then,
again, I didn't like his talkin' that paternalism of
his. I always heard it was the worst kind of thing
for the country ; I was brought up to think the best
government was the one that governs the least;
and I didn't want to hear that kind of talk from
a man that was livin' on my money. I couldn't
bear it from him. Or I thought I couldn't before —

before " He stopped again, and gulped. "I

reckon now there ain't anything I couldn't bear."

March was moved by the blunt words and the
mute stare forward with which they ended. " Mr.
Dryfoos, I didn't know that you understood Lin-
dau's German, or I shouldn't have allowed him —
he wouldn't have allowed himself — to go on. He
VOL. II.— 12

266 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

wouldn't have knowingly abused his position of
guest to censure you, no matter how much he
condemned you."

" I don't care for it now," said Dryfoos. " It 's all
past and gone, as far as I 'm concerned ; but I
wanted you to see that I wasn't tryin' to punish him
for his opinions, as you said."

"No; I see now," March assented, though he
thought his position still justified. " I wish "

"I don't know as I understand much about his
opinions, anyway ; but I ain't ready to say I want
the men dependent on me to manage my business
for me. I always tried to do the square thing by
my hands ; and in that particular case out there, I
took on all the old hands just as fast as they left
their Union. As for the game I came on them, it
was dog eat dog, anyway."

March could have laughed to think how far this
old man was from even conceiving of Lindau's point
of view, and how he was saying the worst of himself
that Lindau could have said of him. No one could
have characterised the kind of thing he had done
more severely than he when he called it dog eat dog.

" There 's a great deal to be said on both sides,"
March began, hoping to lead up through this gener-
ality to the fact of Lindau's death ; but the old man
went on —

" Well, a*ll I wanted him to know is that I wasn't
trying to punish him for what he said about things
in general. You naturally got that idea, I reckon ;
but I always went in for lettin' people say what

HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 267

they please and think what they please; it's the
only way in a free country."

"I'm afraid, Mr. Dryfoos, that it would make
little difference to Lindau now "

"I don't suppose he bears malice for it," said
Dryfoos, " but what I want to do is to have him
told so. He could understand just why I didn't
want to be called hard names, and yet I didn't
object to his thinkin' whatever he pleased. I 'd like
him to know "

" No one can speak to him, no one can tell him,"
March began again, but again Dryfoos prevented
him from going on.

"I understand it's a delicate thing; and I'm not
askin' you to do it. What I would really like to do
— if you think he could be prepared for it, some
way, and could stand it — would be to go to him
myself, and tell him just what the trouble was.
I 'm in hopes, if I done that, he could see how I felt
about it."

A picture of Dryfoos going to the dead Lindau
with his vain regrets presented itself to March, and
he tried once more to make the old man understand.
"Mr. Dryfoos," he said, "Lindau is past all that
for ever," and he felt the ghastly comedy of it when
Dryfoos continued, without heeding him —

"I got a particular reason why I want him to
believe it wasn't his ideas I objected to — them ideas
of his about the government carryin' everything on
and givin' work. I don't understand 'em exactly,
but I found a writin' — among — my son's — things"

268 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

(he seemed to force the. words through his teeth),
" and I reckon he — thought — that way. Kind of a
diary — where he — put down — his thoughts. My son
and me — we differed about a good — many things."
His chin shook, and from time to time he stopped.
" I wasn't very good to him, I reckon ; I crossed
him where I guess I got no business to crossed him ;
but I thought everything of — Coonrod. He was the
best boy, from a baby, that ever was ; just so patient
and mild, and done whatever he was told. I ought
to V let him been a preacher ! O my son, my son ! "
The sobs could not be kept back any longer ; they
shook the old man with a violence that made March
afraid for him ; but he controlled himself at last
with a series of hoarse sounds like barks. " Well,
it 's all past and gone ! But as I understand you
from what }rou saw, when — Coonrod — was — killed,
he was try in' to save that old man from trouble 1 "

" Yes, yes ! It seemed so to me."

" That '11 do, then ! I want you to have him
come back and write for the book when he gets well.
I want you to find out and let me know if there 's
anything I can do for him. I '11 feel as if I done it
— for my — son. I '11 take him into my own house,
and do for him there, if you say so, when he gets so
he can be moved. I'll wait on him myself. It's
what Coonrod 'd do, if he was here. I don't feel any
hardness to him because it was him that got Coonrod
killed, as you might say, in one sense of the term ;
but I Ve tried to think it out, and I feel like I was
all the more beholden to him. because my son died

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 269

tryin' to save him. Whatever I do, I '11 be doin' it
for Coonrod, and that 's enough for me." He seemed
to have finished, and he turned to March as if to
hear what he had to say.

March hesitated. " I 'm afraid, Mr. Dryfoos

Didn't Fulkerson tell you that Lindau was very sick!"
" Yes, of course. But he 's all right, he said."
Now it had to come, though the fact had been
latterly playing fast and loose with March's con-
sciousness. Something almost made him smile ; the
willingness he had once felt to give this old man
pain ; then he consoled himself by thinking that at
least he was not obliged to meet Dryfoos's wish to
make atonement with the fact that Lindau had
renounced him, and would on no terms work for
such a man as he, or suffer any kindness from him.
In this light Lindau seemed the harder of the two,
and March had the momentary force to say : " Mr.
Dryfoos — it can't be. Lindau — I have just come
from him — is dead."

XL

" How did he take it ? How could he bear it ?
0 Basil ! I wonder you could have the heart to say
it to him. It was cruel ! "

"Yes, cruel enough, my dear," March owned to
his wife, when they talked the matter over on his
return home. He could not wait till the children
were out of the way, and afterward neither he nor
his wife was sorry that he had spoken of it before
them. The girl cried plentifully for her old friend
who was dead, and said she hated Mr. Dryfoos, and
then was sorry for him, too ; and the boy listened
to all, and spoke with a serious sense that pleased
his father. " But as to how he took it," March went
on to answer his wife's question about Dryfoos, "how
do any of us take a thing that hurts ? Some of us
cry out, and some of us — don't. Dryfoos drew a
kind of long, quivering breath, as a child does when
it grieves — there 's something curiously simple and
primitive about him — and didn't say anything.
After a while he asked me how he could see the
people at the hospital about the remains; I gave
him my card to the young doctor there that had
charge of Lindau. I suppose he was still carrying

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 271

forward his plan of reparation in his mind — to the
dead for the dead. But how useless ! If he could
have taken the living Lindau home with him, and
cared for him all his days, what would it have
profited the gentle creature whose life his worldly
ambition vexed and thwarted here ? He might as
well offer a sacrifice at Conrad's grave. Children,"
said March, turning to them, " death is an exile that
no remorse and no love can reach. Kemember that,
and be good to every one here on earth, for your
longing to retrieve any harshness or unkindness to
the dead will be the very ecstasy of anguish to you.
I wonder," he mused, " if one of the reasons why
we're shut up to our ignorance of what is to be
hereafter isn't that we should be still more brutal to
one another here, in the hope of making reparation
somewhere else. Perhaps, if we ever come to obey
the law of love on earth, the mystery of death will
be taken away."

" Well " — the ancestral Puritanism spoke in Mrs.
March — " these two old men have been terribly
punished. They have both been violent and wilful,
and they have both been punished. No one need
ever tell me there is not a moral government of the
universe ! "

March always disliked to hear her talk in this
way, which did both her head and heart injustice.
"And Conrad," he said, "what was he punished
for ?"

"He?" she answered, in an exaltation: "he
suffered for the sins of others."
2R

272 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

" Ah, well, if you put it in that way, yes. That
goes on continually. That 's another mystery."

He fell to brooding on it, and presently he heard
his son saying, " I suppose, papa, that Mr. Lindau
died in a bad cause ? "

March was startled. He had always been so
sorry for Lindau, and admired his courage and
generosity so much, that he had never fairly con-
sidered this question. " Why, yes," he answered ;
"he died in the cause of disorder; he was trying
to obstruct the law. No doubt there was a wrong
there, an inconsistency and an injustice that he felt
keenly; but it could not be reached in his way
without greater wrong."

" Yes ; that 's what I thought," said the boy.
"And what's the use of our ever fighting about
anything in America ? I always thought we could
vote anything we wanted."

" We can, if we 're honest, and don't buy and sell
one another's votes," said his father. "And men
like Lindau, who renounce the American means as
hopeless, and let their love of justice hurry them
into sympathy with violence, yes, they are wrong ;
and poor Lindau did die in a bad cause, as you say,
Tom."

"I think Conrad had no business there, or you
either, Basil," said his wife.

"Oh, I don't defend myself," said March. "I
was there in the cause of literary curiosity and of
conjugal disobedience. But Conrad — yes, he had
some business there : it was his business to suffer

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 273

there for the sins of others. Isabel, we can't throw
aside that old doctrine of the Atonement yet. The
life of Christ, it wasn't only in healing the sick and
going about to do good ; it was suffering for the sins
of others ! That 's as great a mystery as the
mystery of death. Why should there be such a
principle in the world ? But it 's been felt, and
more or less dumbly, blindly recognised ever since
Calvary. If we love mankind, pity them, we even
wish to suffer for them. That's what has created
the religious orders in all times — the brotherhoods
and sisterhoods that belong to our day as much as
to the mediaeval past. That 's what is driving a
girl like Margaret Vance, who has everything that
the world can offer her young beauty, on to the
work of a Sister of Charity among the poor and the
dying."

" Yes, yes ! " cried Mrs. March. " How — how did
she look there, Basil 1 " She had her feminine mis-
givings; she was not sure but the girl was something
of a poseuse, and enjoyed the picturesqueness, as
well as the pain ; and she wished to be convinced
that it was not so.

" Well," she said, when March had told again the
little there was to tell, " I suppose it must be a
great trial to a woman like Mrs. Horn to have her
niece going that way."

" The way of Chris 1 v asked March, with a
smile.

" Oh, Christ came into the world to teach us how
to live rightly in it, too. If we were all to spend
12*

274 A HAZARD OF ls7E\V FORTUNES.

our time in hospitals, it would be rather dismal for
the homes. But perhaps you don't think the homes
are worth minding 1 " she suggested, with a certain
note in her voice that he knew.

He got up and kissed her. "I think the gim-
crackeries are." He took the hat he had set down
on the parlour table on coming in, and started to put
it in the hall, and that made her notice it.

" You 've been getting a new hat ! "

" Yes," he hesitated ; " the old one had got — was
decidedly shabby."

"Well, that's right. I don't like you to wear
them too long. Did you leave the old one to be
pressed ? "

" Well, the hatter seemed to think it was hardly
worth pressing," said March. He decided that for
the present his wife's nerves had quite all they
could bear.

XII.

IT was in a manner grotesque, but to March it
was all the more natural for that reason, that
Dryfoos should have Lindau's funeral from hia
house. He knew the old man to be darkly groping,
through the payment of these vain honours to the
dead, for some atonement to his son, and he imagined
him finding in them such comfort as comes from
doing all one can, even when all is useless.

No one knew what Lindau's religion was, and in
default they had had the Anglican burial service
read over him ; it seems the refuge of all the home-
less dead. Mrs. Dryfoos came down for the
ceremony. She understood that it was for Coonrod's
sake that his father wished the funeral to be there ;
and she confided to Mrs. March that she believed
Coonrod would have been pleased. " Coonrod was
a member of the 'Piscopal Church; and fawther's
doin' the whole thing for Coonrod as much as for
anybody. He thought the world of Coonrod,
fawther did. Mela, she kind of thought it would
look queer to have two funerals from the same
house, hand-runnin', as you might call it, and one of
'em no relation, either; but when she saw how

276 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

fawther was bent on it, she give in. Seems as if
she was tryin' to make up to fawther for Coonrod as
much as she could. Mela always was a good child,
but nobody can ever come up to Coonrod."

March felt all the grotesqueness, the hopeless
absurdity of Dryfoos's endeavour at atonement in
these vain obsequies to the man for whom he be
lieved his son to have died ; but the effort had its
magnanimity, its pathos, and there was a poetry
that appealed to him in this reconciliation through
death of men, of ideas, of conditions, that could only
have gone warring on in life. He thought, as the
priest went on with the solemn liturgy, how all the
world must come together in that peace which,
struggle and strive as we may, shall claim us at last.
He looked at Dryfoos, and wondered whether he
would consider these rites a sufficient tribute, or
whether there was enough in him to make him
realise their futility, except as a mere sign of his
wish to retrieve the past. He thought how we
never can atone for the wrong we do ; the heart we
have grieved and .wounded cannot kindle with pity
for us when once it is stilled ; and yet we can put
our evil from us with penitence; and somehow,
somewhere, the order of loving-kindness, which our
passion or our wilfulness has disturbed, will be
restored.

Dryfoos, through Fulkerson, had asked all the
more intimate contributors of Every Other Week to
come. Beaton was absent, but Fulkerson had
brought Miss Woodburn, with her father, and Mrs.

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 277"

Leighton and Alma, to fill up, as he said. Mela was
much present, and was official with the arrangement
of the flowers and the welcome of the guests. She
imparted this impersonality to her reception of
Kendricks, whom Fulkerson met in the outer hall
with his party, and whom he presented in whisper
to them all. Kendricks smiled under his breath, as-
it were, and was then mutely and seriously polite to
the Leightons. Alma brought a little bunch of
flowers, which were lost in the presence of those
which Dryfoos had ordered to be unsparingly
provided.

It was a kind of satisfaction to Mela to have Miss
Vance come, and reassuring as to how it would look
to have the funeral there; Miss Vance would
certainly not have come unless it had been all right ^
she had come, and had sent some Easter lilies.

"Ain't Christine coming down?" Fulkerson asked
Mela.

" No, she ain't a bit well, and she ain't been, ever
since Coonrod died. I don't know what 's got over
her," said Mela. She added, "Well, I should V
thought Mr. Beaton would 'a' made out to 'a' come ! "

"Beaton's peculiar," said Fulkerson. "If he
thinks you want him he takes a pleasure in not
letting you have him."

" Well, goodness knows, I don't want him," said
the girl.

Christine kept her room, and for the most part
kept her bed ; but there seemed nothing definitely
matter with her, and she would not let them

278 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

call a doctor. Her mother said she reckoned she
was beginning to feel the spring weather, that
always perfectly pulled a body down in New York ;
and Mela said if being as cross as two sticks was
any sign of spring-fever, Christine had it bad. She
was faithfully kind to her, and submitted to all her
humours, but she recompensed herself by the freest
criticism of Christine when not in actual attendance
on her. Christine would not suffer Mrs. Mandel to
approach her, and she had with her father a sullen
submission which was not resignation. For her,
apparently, Conrad had not died, or had died in
vain.

" Pshaw ! " said Mela, one morning when she
came to breakfast, " I reckon if we was to send up
an old card of Mr. Beaton's she 'd rattle downstairs
fast enough. If she's sick, she's love-sick. It
makes me sick to see her."

Mela was talking to Mrs. Mandel, but her father
looked up from his plate, and listened. Mela went
on: "/ don't know what's made the fellow quit
comun'. But he was an aggravatun' thing, and no
more dependable than water. It 's just like Mr.
Fulkerson said, if he thinks you want him he'll
take a pleasure in not lettun' you have him. I
reckon that 's what 's the matter with Christine. I
believe in my heart the girl '11 die if she don't git
him." •

Mela went on to eat her breakfast with her own
good appetite. She now always came down to keep
her father company, as she said, and she did her

A HAZARD OP NEW FORTUNES. 279

best to cheer and comfort him. At least she kept
the talk going, and she had it nearly all to herself,
for Mrs Mandel was now merely staying on pro-
visionally, and in the absence of any regrets or
excuses from Christine, was looking ruefully for-
ward to the moment when she must leave even this
ungentle home for the chances of the ruder world
outside.

The old man said nothing at table, but when
.Mela went up to see if she could do anything for
Christine, he asked Mrs. Mandel again about all the
facts of her last interview with Beaton.

She gave them as fully as she could remember
them, and the old man made no comment on them.
But he went out directly after, and at Every Other
Week office he climbed the stairs to Fulkerson's
room, and asked for Beaton's address. No one yet
had taken charge of Conrad's work, and Fulkerson
was running the thing himself, as he said, till he
could talk with Dryfoos about it. The old man
would not look into the empty room where he had
last seen his son alive; he turned his face away, and
hurried by the door.

xm.

THE course of public events carried Beaton's
private affairs beyond the reach of his simple first
intention to renounce his connection with Every
Qther Week. In fact this was not perhaps so simple
as it seemed, and long before it could be put in
•effect it appeared still simpler to do nothing about
the matter : to remain passive and leave the initiative
to Dryfoos, to maintain the dignity of unconscious-
ness and let recognition of any change in the
situation come from those who had caused the
change. After all, it was rather absurd to propose
making a purely personal question the pivot on
which his relations with Every Other Week turned.
He took a hint from March's position and decided
that he did not know Dryfoos in these relations ; he
only knew Fulkerson, who had certainly had nothing
to do with Mrs. Handel's asking his intentions. As
he reflected upon this he became less eager to look
Fulkerson up and make the magazine a partner of
his own sufferings. This was the soberer mood to
which Beaton trusted that night even before he
slept, and he awoke fully confirmed in it. As he
examined the offence done him in the cold light of

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 281

day, he perceived that it had not come either from
Mrs. Mandel, who was visibly the faltering and
unwilling instrument of it, or from Christine, who
was altogether ignorant of it, but from Dryfoos,
whom he could not hurt by giving up his place. He
could only punish Fulkerson by that, and Fulkerson
was innocent. Justice and interest alike dictated
the passive course to which Beaton inclined ; and he
reflected that he might safely leave the punishment
of Dryfoos to Christine, who would find out what
had happened, and would be able to take care of
herself in any encounter of tempers with her father.
Beaton did not go to the office during the week
that followed upon this conclusion; but they were
used there to these sudden absences of his, and as
his work for the time was in train, nothing was
made of his staying away, except the sarcastic com-
ment which the thought of him was apt to excite in
the literary department. He no longer came so
much to the Leightons, and Fulkerson was in no
state of mind to miss any one there except Miss
Woodburn, whom he never missed. Beaton was
left, then, unmolestedly awaiting the course of
destiny, when he read in the morning paper, over
his coffee at Maroni's, the deeply scare-headed story
of Conrad's death and the clubbing of Lindau. He
probably cared as little for either of them as any
man that ever saw them ; but he felt a shock if not
a pang at Conrad's fate, so out of keeping with his
life and character. He did not know what to do ;
and he did nothing. He was not asked to the

282 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES,

funeral, but he had .not expected that, and when
Fulkerson brought him notice that Lindau was also
to be buried from Dryfoos's house, it was without

] his usual sullen vindictiveness that he kept away.

- In his sort, and as much as a man could who was
necessarily so much taken up with himself, he was
sorry for Conrad's father; Beaton had a peculiar
tenderness for his own father, and he imagined how
his father would feel if it were he who had been
killed in Conrad's place, as it might very well have
been ; he sympathised with himself in view of the
possibility ; and for once they were mistaken who
thought him indifferent and merely brutal in his
failure to appear at Lindau's obsequies.

He would really have gone if he had known how-
to reconcile his presence in that house with the
terms of his effective banishment from it; and he
was rather forgivingly finding himself wronged in
the situation, when Dryfoos knocked at the studio
door the morning after Lindau's funeral. Beaton
roared out "Come in !" as he always did to a knock
if he had not a model : if he had a model he set the
door slightly ajar, and with his palette on his thumb
frowned at his visitor, and told him he could not
.come in. Dryfoos fumbled about for the knob in
the dim passageway outside, and Beaton, who had
experience of people's difficulties with it, suddenly
jerked the door open. The two men stood con-
, fronted, and at first sight of each other their
quiescent dislike revived. Each would have been
willing to turn away from the other, but that

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 283

was not possible. Beaton snorted some sort of
inarticulate salutation, which Dryfoos did not try to
return ; he asked if he could, see him alone for a
minute or two, and Beaton bade him come in, and
swept some paint-blotched rags from the chair which
he told him to take. He noticed, as the old man
sank tremulously into it, that his movement was
like that of his own father, and also that he looked
very much like Christine. Dryfoos folded his hands
tremulously on the top of his horn-handled stick, and
he was rather finely haggard, with the dark hollows
round his black eyes, and the fall of the muscles on
either side of his chin. He had forgotten to take
his soft, wide-brimmed hat off; and Beaton felt a
desire to sketch him just as he sat.

Dryfoos suddenly pulled himself together from
the dreary absence into which he fell at first.
" Young man," he began, " may be I Ve come here
on a fool's errand," and Beaton rather fancied that
beginning.

But it embarrassed him a little, and he said, with
a shy glance aside, "I don't know what you mean."

" I reckon," Dryfoos answered quietly, "you got
your notion, though. I set that woman on to speak
to you the way she done. But if there was anything
wrong in the way she spoke ; or if you didn't feel
like she had any right to question you up as if we
suspected you of anything mean, I want you to say
so."

Beaton said nothing and the old man went on.

" I ain't very well up in the ways of the world,

284 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

and I don't pretend to be. All I want is to be fair
and square with everybody. I've made mistakes,

though, in my time " He stopped, and Beaton

was not proof against the misery of his face, which
was twisted as with some strong physical ache. " I
don't know as I want to make any more, if I can
help it. I don't know but what you had a right to
keep on comin', and if you had I want you to say so.
Don't you be afraid but what I'll take it in the
right way. I don't want to take advantage of any-
body; and I don't ask you to say any more than that."

Beaton did not find the humiliation of the man
who had humiliated him so sweet as he could have
fancied it might be. He knew how it had come
about, and that it was an effect of love for his child ;
it did not matter by what ungracious means she had
brought him to know that he loved her better than
his own will, that his wish for her happiness was
stronger than his pride ; it was enough that he was
now somehow brought to give proof of it. Beaton
could not be aware of all that dark coil of circum-
stance through which Dryfoos's present action
evolved itself ; the worst of this was buried in the
secret of the old man's heart, a worm of perpetual
torment. What was apparent to another was that
he was broken by the sorrow that had fallen upon
him, and it was this that Beaton respected and pitied
in his impulse to be frank and kind in his answer.

" No, I had no right to keep coming to your house
in the way I did, unless — unless I meant more than
I ever said." Beaton added, " I don't say that what

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 285

you did was usual — in this country, at any rate ; but
I can't say you were wrong. Since you speak to me
about the matter, it 's only fair to myself to say that
a good deal goes on in life without much thinking
of consequences. That 's the way I excuse myself."

" And you say Mrs. Mandel done right ? " asked
Dryfoos, as if he wished simply to be assured of a
point of etiquette.

"Yes, she did right. I've nothing to complain
of."

" That 's all I wanted to know," said Dryfoos ; but
apparently he had not finished, and he did not go,
though the silence that Beaton now kept gave him
a chance to do so. He began a series of questions
which had no relation to the matter in hand, though
they were strictly personal to Beaton. " What
countryman are you 1 " he asked, after a moment.

" What countryman ? " Beaton frowned back at
him.

" Yes, are you an American by birth ? "

" Yes ; I was born in Syracuse."

" Protestant 1 "

"My father is a Scotch Seceder."

" What business is your father in ? "

Beaton faltered and blushed ; then he answered,
" He 's in the monument business, as he calls it.
He's a tombstone cutter." Now that he was
launched, Beaton saw no reason for not declaring,
" My father 's always been a poor man, and worked
with his own hands for his living." He had too
slight esteem socially for Dryfoos to conceal a fact

286 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

from him that he might have wished to blink with
others.

"Well, that's right," said Dryfoos. "I used to
farm it myself. I've got a good pile of money
together, now. At first it didn't come easy ; but
now it 's got started it pours in and pours in ; it
seems like there was no end to it. I Ve got well on
to three million ; but it couldn't keep me from losin*
my son. It can't buy me back a minute of his life ;
not all the money in the world can do it ! "

He grieved this out as if to himself rather than to
Beaton, who scarcely ventured to say, " I know — I
am very sorry "

"How did you come," Dryfoos interrupted, "to
take up paintin' 1 "

" Well, I don't know," said Beaton, a little scorn-
fully. " You don't take a thing of that kind up, I
fancy. I always wanted to paint."

" Father try to stop you ? "

"No. It wouldn't have been of any use.
Why "

" My son, he wanted to be a preacher, and I did
stop him — or I thought I did. But I reckon he was
a preacher, all the same, every minute of his life.
As you say, it ain't any use to try to stop a thing
like that. I reckon if a child has got any particular
bent, it was given to it ; and it 's goin' against the
grain, it's goin' against the law, to try to bend it
some other way. There 's lots of good business men
Mr. Beaton, twenty of 'em to every good preacher ?"

"I imagine more than twenty," said Beaton,

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES, 287

amused and touched through his curiosity as to
what the old man was driving at by the quaint sim-
plicity of his speculations. -

" Father ever come to the city ? "

" No ; he never has the time ; and my mother 's
a.n invalid."

" Oh ! Brothers and sisters 1 "

" Yes ; we 're a large family."

" I lost two little fellers — twins," said Dryfoos
sadly. " But we hain't ever had but just the five.
Ever take portraits ? "

"Yes," said Beaton, meeting this zigzag in the
queries as seriously as the rest. " I don't think I
am good at it."

Dryfoos got to his feet. " I wished you 'd paint
a likeness of my son. You've seen him plenty of
times. We won't fight about the price, don't you
be afraid of that."

Beaton was astonished, and in a mistaken way he
was disgusted. He saw that Dryfoos was trying to
undo Mrs. Mandel's work practically, and get him
to come again to his house ; that he now conceived
of the offence given him as condoned, and wished to
restore the former situation. He knew that he was
attempting this for Christine's sake, but he was not
the man to imagine that Dryfoos was trying not
only to tolerate him but to like him ; and in fact
Dryfoos was not wholly conscious himself of this
end. What they both understood was that Dryfoos
was endeavouring to get at Beaton through Conrad's
memory ; but with one this was its dedication to a

288 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

purpose of self-sacrifice and with the other a vulgai
and shameless use of it.

"I couldn't do it," said Beaton. "I couldn't
think of attempting it."

" Why not ? " Dryfoos persisted. " We got some
photographs of him ; he didn't like to sit very well ;
but his mother got him to ; and you know how he
looked."

" I couldn't do it — I couldn't. I can't even con-
sider it. I 'm very sorry. I would, if it were
possible. But it isn't possible."

" I reckon if you see the photographs once "

" It isn't that, Mr. Dryfoos. But I 'm not in the
way of that kind of thing any more."

" I 'd give any price you 've a mind to name "

" Oh, it isn't the money ! " cried Beaton, beginning
to lose control of himself.

The old man did not notice him. He sat with
his head fallen forward, and his chin resting on his
folded hands. Thinking of the portrait, he saw
Conrad's face before him, reproachful, astonished,
but all gentle as it looked when Conrad caught his
hand that day after he struck him ; he heard him
say, " Father ! " and the sweat gathered on his fore-
head. " 0 my God ! " he groaned. " No ; there
ain't anything I can do now."

Beaton did not know whether Dryfoos was speak-
ing to him or not. He started toward him : " Are
you ill?"

" No, there ain't anything the matter," said the
old man. " But I guess 1 11 lay down on your settee

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 289

a minute." He tottered with Beaton's help to the
aesthetic couch covered with a tiger-skin, on which
Beaton had once thought of painting a Cleopatra ;
but he could never get the right model. As the old
man stretched himself out on it, pale and suffering,
he did not look much like a Cleopatra, but Beaton
was struck with his effectiveness, and the likeness
between him and his daughter ; she would make a
very good Cleopatra in some ways. All the time,
while these thoughts passed through his mind, he
was afraid Dryfoos would die. The old man fetched
his breath in gasps, which presently smoothed and
lengthened into his normal breathing. Beaton got
him a glass of wine, and after tasting it he sat
up.

" You Ve got to excuse me," he said, getting back
to his characteristic grimness with surprising sudden-
ness, when once he began to recover himself. " I Ve
been through a good deal lately ; and sometimes it
ketches me round the heart like a pain."

In his life of selfish immunity from grief Beaton
could not understand this experience that poignant
sorrow brings ; he said to himself that Dryfoos was
going the way of angina pectoris ; as he began shuffling
off the tiger-skin he said, ' Had you better get up ?
Wouldn't you like me to call a doctor ? "

" I 'm all right, young man." Dryfoos took his
hat and stick from him, but he made for the door
so uncertainly that Beaton put his hand under his
elbow and helped him out, and down the stairs, to
his coupe\

VOL. II— 13

290 A HAZARf) OF NEW FORTUNES;

" Hadn't you Better let me drive home with you ? n
he asked.

" What ? " said Dryfoos suspiciously.

Beaton repeated his question.

-" I guess I 'm able to go home alone," said Dryfoos,
in a surly tone, and he put his head out of the
window and called up " Home ! " to the driver,
who immediately started off, and left Beaton stand-
ing beside the curb-stone.

XIV.

BEATON wasted the rest of the day in the
emotions and speculations which Dryfoos's call in-
spired. It was not that they continuously occupied
him, but they broke up the train of other thoughts,
and spoiled him for work; a very little spoiled
Beaton for work; he required just the right mood
for work. He comprehended perfectly well that
Dryfoos had made him that extraordinary embassy
because he wished him to renew his visits, and he
easily imagined the means that had brought him to
this pass. From what he knew of that girl he did
not envy her father his meeting with her when he
must tell her his mission had failed. But had it
failed ? When Beaton came to ask himself this
question, he could only perceive that he and Dry-
foos had failed to find any ground of sympathy, and
had parted in the same dislike with which they had
met. But as to any other failure, it was certainly
tacit, and it still rested with him to give it effect.
He could go back to Dryfoos's house, as freely as
before, and it was clear that he was very much de-
sired to come back. But if he went back it was also
clear that he must go back with intentions more

292 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

explicit than before, and now he had to ask himself
just how much or how little he had meant by going
there. His liking for Christine had certainly not
increased, but the charm, on the other hand, of
holding a leopardess in leash had not yet palled
upon him. In his life of inconstancies, it was
a pleasure to rest upon something fixed, and the
man who had no control over himself liked logically
enough to feel his control of some one else. The
fact cannot otherwise be put in terms, and the
attraction which Christine Dryfoos had for him,
apart from this, escapes from all terms, as anything
purely and merely passional must. He had seen
from the first that she was a cat, and so far as youth
forecasts such things, he felt that she would be a
shrew. But he had a perverse sense of her beauty,
and he knew a sort of life in which her power to
molest him with her temper could be reduced to the
smallest proportions, and even broken to pieces.
Then the consciousness of her money entered.
It was evident that the old man had mentioned
his millions in the way of a hint to him of what
he might reasonably expect if he would turn and
be his son-in-law. Beaton did not put it to him-
self in those words; and in fact his cogitations were
not in words at all. It was the play of cognitions,
of sensations, formlessly tending to the effect which
can only be very clumsily interpreted in language.
But when he got to this point in them, Beaton
rose to magnanimity a.nd in a flash of dramatic
reverie disposed of a part of Dryfoos's riches in

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 293

placing his father and mother, and his brothers and
sisters, beyond all pecuniary anxiety for ever. He
had no shame, no scruple in this, for he had been
a pensioner upon others ever since a Syracusan
amateur of the arts had detected his talent, and
given him th,e money to go and study abroad.
Beaton had always considered the money a loan, to
be repaid out of his future success ; but he now
never dreamt of repaying it ; as the man was rich,
he had even a contempt for the notion of repaying
him ; but this did not prevent him from feeling very
keenly the hardships he put his father to in borrow-
ing money from him, though he never repaid his
father, either. In this reverie he saw himself sacri-
ficed in marriage with Christine Dryfoos, in a kind
of admiring self-pity, and he was melted by the
spectacle of the dignity with which he suffered all
the life-long trials ensuing from his unselfishness.
The fancy that Alma Leighton came bitterly to
regret him, contributed to soothe and natter him,
and he was not sure that Margaret Vance did not
suffer a like loss in him.

There had been times when, as he believed, that"
beautiful girl's high thoughts had tended toward
him ; there had been looks, gestures, even words,
that had this effect to him, or that seemed to have
had it ; and Beaton saw that he might easily construe
Mrs. Horn's confidential appeal to him to get Mar-
garet interested in art again as something by no
means necessarily offensive, even though it had been
made to him as to a master of illusion. If Mrs.

294 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

Horn had to choose between him and the life of
good works to which her niece was visibly abandon-
ing herself, Beaton could not doubt which she would
choose ; the only question was how real the danger
of a life of good works was.

As he thought of these two girls, one so charm-
ing and the other so divine, it became indefinitely
difficult to renounce them for Christine Dryfoos,
with her sultry temper, and her earthbound ideals.
Life had been so flattering to Beaton hitherto that
he could not believe them both finally indifferent ;
and if they were not indifferent, perhaps he did not
wish either of them to be very definite. What he
really longed for was their sympathy ; for a man
who is able to walk round quite ruthlessly on the
feelings of others often has very tender feelings of
his own, easily lacerated, and eagerly responsive to
the caresses of compassion. In this frame Beaton
determined to go that afternoon, though it was not
Mrs. Horn's day, and call upon her in the hope of
possibly seeing Miss Vance alone. As he continued
in it, he took this for a sign, and actually went. It
did not fall out at once as he wished, but he got
Mrs. Horn to talking again about her niece, and Mrs.
Horn again regretted that nothing could be done by
the fine arts to reclaim Margaret from good works.

" Is she at home ? Will you let me see her 1 "
asked Beaton with something of the scientific
interest of a physician inquiring for a patient whose
symptoms have been rehearsed to him. He had not
asked for her before.

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 295

" Yes, certainly," said Mrs. Horn, and she went
herself to call Margaret, and she did not return with
her. The girl entered with the gentle grace peculiar
to her ; and Beaton, bent as he was on his own
consolation, could not help being struck with the
spiritual exaltation of her look. At sight of her,
the vague hope he had never quite relinquished,
that they might be something more than aesthetic
friends, died in his heart. She wore black, as she
often did ; but in spite of its fashion her dress
received a nun-like effect from the pensive absence
of her face. " Decidedly," thought Beaton, " she is
far gone in good works."

But he rose, all the same, to meet her on the old
level, and he began at once to talk to her of the
subject he had been discussing with her aunt. He
said frankly that they both felt she had unjustifiably
turned her back upon possibilities which she ought
not to neglect.

" You know very well," she answered, " that I
couldn't do anything in that way worth the time
I should waste on it. Don't talk of it, please. I
suppose my aunt has been asking you to say this,
but it 's no use. I 'm sorry it 's no use, she wishes
it so much ; but I 'm not sorry otherwise. You can
find the pleasure at least of doing good work in it ;
but I couldn't find anything in it but a barren
amusement. Mr. Wetmore is right ; for me, it 's
like enjoying an opera, or a ball."

" That 's one of Wetmore's phrases. He 'd sacrifice
anything to them."

296 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

She put aside the whole subject with a look.
" You were not at Mr. Dryfoos's the other day.
Have you seen them, any of them, lately ? "

" I haven't been there for some time, no," &aid
Beaton evasively. But he thought if he was to get
on to anything, he had better be candid. " Mr.
Dryfoos was at my studio this morning. He 's got
a queer notion. He wants me to paint his son's
portrait."

She started. " And will you "

" No, I couldn't do such a thing. It isn't in my
way. I told him so. His son had a beautiful face
— an antique profile ; a sort of early Christian type ;
but I 'm too much of a pagan for that sort of thing."

"Yes."

"Yes," Beaton continued, not quite liking her
assent, after he had invited it He had his pride in
being a pagan, a Greek, but it failed him in her
presence, now; and he wished that she had pro-
tested he was none. " He was a singular creature ;
a kind of survival ; an exile in our time and place.
I don't know : we don't quite expect a saint to be
rustic; but with all his goodness Conrad Dryfoos
was a country person. If he were not dying for a
cause you could imagine him milking." Beaton
intended a contempt that came from the bitterness
of having himself once milked the family cow.

His contempt did not reach Miss Vance. " He
died for a cause," she said. " The holiest."

"Of labour 1"

"Of peace. He was there to persuade the
strikers to be quiet and go home."

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 297

" I haven't been quite sure," said Beaton. " But
in any case he had no business there. The police
were on hand to do the persuading."

" I can't let you talk so ! " cried the girl. " It 's
shocking ! Oh, I know it 's the way people talk,
and the worst is that in the sight of the world it 's
the right way. But the blessing on the peace-
makers is not for the policemen with their clubs."

Beaton saw that she was nervous ; he made his
reflection that she was altogether too far gone in
good works for the fine arts to reach her ; he began
to think how he could turn her primitive Christi-
anity to the account • of his modern heathenism.
He had no deeper design than to get flattered back
into his own favour far enough to find courage for
some sort of decisive step. In his heart he was try-
ing to will whether he should or should not go back
to Dryfoos's house. It could not be from the caprice
that had formerly taken him; it must be from a
definite purpose; again he realised this. "Of
course ; you are right," he said. " I wish I could
have answered that old man differently. I fancy he
was bound up in his son, though he quarrelled with
him, and crossed him. But I couldn't do it; it
wasn't possible." He said to himself that if she
said, "No," now, he would be ruled by her agree-
ment with him ; and if she disagreed with him, he
would be ruled still by the chance, and would go no
more to the Dryfoos's. He found himself em-
barrassed to the point of blushing when she said
nothing, and left him, as it were, on his own hands.
"I should like to have given him that comfort; I
13*

298 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

fancy he hasn't much comfort in life ; but there
seems no comfort in me." He dropped his head in
a fit attitude for compassion ; but she poured no
pity upon it.

"There is no comfort -for us in ourselves," she
said. " It 's hard to get outside ; but there 's only
despair within. When we think we have done
something for others, by some great effort, we find
it's all for our own vanity."

"Yes," said Beaton. "If I could paint pictures
for righteousness' sake, I should have been glad to
do Conrad Dryfoos for his father. I felt sorry for
him. Did the rest seem very much broken up ?
You saw them all ? "

"Not all. Miss Dryfoos was ill, her sister said.
It's hard to tell how much people suffer. His
mother seemed bewildered. The younger sister is
a simple creature ; she looks like him ; I think she
must have something of his spirit."

"Not much spirit of any kind, I imagine," said
Beaton. " But she 's amiably material. Did they
say Miss Dryfoos was seriously ill 1 "

" No. I supposed she might be prostrated by her
brother's death."

"Does she seem that kind of person to you, Miss
Vance 1 " asked Beaton.

" I don't know. I haven't tried to see so much
of them as I might, the past winter. I was not
sure about her when I met her ; I 've never seen
much of people, except in my own set, and the—
very poor. I have been afraid I didn't understand

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 299

her. She may have a kind of pride that would not
let her do herself justice."

Beaton felt the unconscious dislike in the endea-
vour of praise. " Then she seems to you like a
person whose life — its trials, its chances — would
make more of than she is now 1 "

"I didn't say that. I can't judge of her at all;
but where we don't know, don't you think we ought
to imagine the best ? "

"Oh yes," said Beaton. "I didn't know but
what I once said of them might have prejudiced
you against them. I have accused myself of it."
He always took a tone of conscientiousness, of self-
censure, in talking with Miss Vance ; he could not
help it.

"Oh no. And I never allowed myself to form
any judgment of her. She is very pretty, don't
you think, in a kind of way 1 "

" Very."

" She has a beautiful brunette colouring : that
floury white and the delicate pink in it. Her
eyes are beautiful."

" She 's graceful, too," said Beaton. ' I Ve tried
her in colour; but I didn't make it out."

" I 've wondered sometimes," said Miss Vance,
" whether that elusive quality you find in some
people you try to paint doesn't characterise them
all through. Miss Dryfoos might be ever so much
finer and better than we would find out in the
society way that seems the only way."

" Perhaps," said Beaton gloomily ; and he went

300 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

away profoundly discouraged by this last analysis of
Christine's character. The angelic imperviousness
of Miss Vance to properties of which his own wicked-
ness was so keenly aware in Christine might have
made him laugh, if it had not been such a serious,
affair with him. As it was, he smiled to think how
very different!}' Alma Leighton would have judged
her from Miss Vance's premises. He liked that
clear vision of Alma's even when it pierced his own
disguises. Yes, that was the light he had let die
out, and it mi.;ht have shone upon his path through
life. Beaton never felt so poignantly the dis-
advantage of having on any given occasion been
wanting to his own interests through his self-love
as in this. He had no one to blame but himself for
what had happened, but he blamed Alma for what
might happen in the future because she shut out the
way of retrieval and return. When he thought of
the attitude she had taken toward him, it seemed
incredible, and he was always longing to give her a
final chance to reverse her final judgment. It
appeared to him that the time had come for this
now, if ever.

XV.

WHILE we are still young we feel a kind of pride,,
a sort of fierce pleasure, in any important experi-
ence, such as we have read of or heard of in the
lives of others, no matter how painful. It was this
pride, this pleasure, which Beaton now felt in realis-
ing that the toils of fate were about him, that
between him and a future of which Christine Dry-
foos must be the genius, there was nothing but the
will, the mood, the fancy of a girl who had not
given him the hope that either could ever again be
in his favour. He had nothing to trust to, in fact,
but his knowledge that he had once had them all ;
she did not deny that ; but neither did she conceal
that he had flung away his power over them, and
she had told him that they never could be his again.
A man knows that he can love and wholly cease to
love, not once merely, but several times ; he recog-
nises the fact in regard to himself, both theoretically
and practically ; but in regard to women he cherishes
the superstition of the romances that love is once
for all, and for ever. It was because Beaton would
not believe that Alma Leigh ton, being a woman,
could put him out of her heart after suffering him

302 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

to steal into it, that he now hoped anything from
her, and she had been so explicit when they last
spoke of that affair that he did not hope much.
He said to himself that he was going to cast hirri-
self on her mercy, to take whatever chance of
life, love, and work there was in her having the
smallest pity on him. If she would have none,
then there was but one thing he could do : marry
Christine and go abroad. He did not see how he
could bring this alternative to bear upon Alma;
even if she knew what he would do in case of a
final rejection, he had grounds for fearing she would
not care ; but he brought it to bear upon himself,
and it nerved him to a desperate courage. He
could hardly wait for evening to come, before he
went to see her ; when it came, it seemed to have
come too soon. He had wrought himself thoroughly
into the conviction that he was in earnest, and that
everything depended upon her answer to him, but
it was not till he found himself in her presence, and
alone with her, that he realised the truth of his
conviction. Then the influences of her grace, her
gaiety, her arch beauty, above all, her good sense,
penetrated his soul like a subtle intoxication, and he
"said to himself that he was right; he could not
live without her ; these attributes of hers were what
he needed to win him, to cheer him, to charm him,
to guide him. He longed so to please her, to in-
gratiate himself with her, that he attempted to be
light like her in his talk, but lapsed into abysmal
absences, and gloomy recesses of introspection.

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 303

" What are you laughing at ? " he asked, suddenly
starting from one of these.

" What you are thinking of."

" It 's nothing to laugh at. Do you know what it
is I 'm thinking of 1 '

" Don't tell, if it 's dreadful."

" Oh, I dare say you wouldn't think it 's dreadful,"
he said, with bitterness. "It's simply the case of a
man who has made a fool of himself, and sees no
help of retrieval in himself."

" Can any one else help a man unmake a fool of
himself 1 " she asked, with a smile.

"Yes. In a case like this."

"Dear me ! This is very interesting."

She did not ask him what the case was, but he
vvas launched now, and he pressed on. " I am the
man who has made a fool of himself "

" Oh ! "

" And you can help me out if you will. Alma, I
wish you could see me as I really am."

" Do you, Mr. Beaton 1 Perhaps I do."

"No; you don't. You formulated me in a cer-
tain way, and you won't allow for the change that
takes place in every one. You have changed ; why
shouldn't I ? "

" Has this to do with your having made a fool of
yourself ? "

"Yes."

" Oh ! Then I don't see how you have changed."

She laughed, and he too, ruefully. " You 're cruel.
Not but what I deserve your mockery. But the
2T

304 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

Change was not from the capacity of making a fool
of myself. I suppose I shall always do that more
or less — unless you help me. Alma ! Why can't
you have a little compassion ? You know that I
must always love you."

" Nothing makes me doubt that like your saying it,
Mr. Beaton. But now you 've broken your word —

" You are to blame for that. You knew I couldn't
keep it ! "

"Yes, I'm to blame. I was wrong to let you
•come — after that. And so I forgive you for speak-
ing to me in that way again. But it 's perfectly im-
possible and perfectly useless for me to hear you any
more on that subject ; and so — good-bye ! "

She rose, and he perforce with her. "And do
you mean it 1 " he asked. " For ever ? "

" For ever. This is truly the last time I will ever
see you if I can help it. Oh, I feel sorry enough for
you ! " she said, with a glance at his face. " I do
believe you are in earnest. But it 's too late now.
Don't let us talk about it any more ! But we shall,
if we meet, and so "

" And so good-bye ! Well I 've nothing more to
say, and I might as well say that. I think you Ve
been very good to me. It seems to me as if you had
been — shall I say it 1 — trying to give me a chance.
Is that so ? "

She dropped her eyes and did not answer.

" You found it was no use ! Well, I thank you
for trying. It's curious to think that I once had
your trust, your regard, and now I haven't it. You

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 305

don't mind my remembering that I had 1 It '11 be
some little consolation, and I believe it will be some
help. I know I can't retrieve the past now. It is
too late. It seems too preposterous — perfectly lurid
— that I could have been going to tell you what a
tangle I 'd got myself in, and to ask you to help
untangle me. I must choke in the infernal coil, but
I 'd like to have the sweetness of your pity in it —
whatever it is."

She put out her hand. " Whatever it is. I do pity
you ; I said that."

" Thank you." He kissed the hand she gave him
and went.

He had gone on some such terms before ; was it
now for the last time ? She believed it was. She
felt in herself a satiety, a fatigue, in which his good
looks, his invented airs and poses, his real trouble,
were all alike repulsive. She did not acquit herself
of the wrong of having let him think she might yet
have liked him as she once did ; but she had been
honestly willing to see whether she could. It had
mystified her to find that when they first met in
New York, after their summer in St. Barnaby, she
cared nothing for him ; she had expected to punish
him for his neglect, and then fancy him as before,
but she did not. More and more she saw him selfish
and mean, weak-willed, narrow-minded and hard-
hearted ; and aimless, with all his talent. She ad-
mired his talent in proportion as she learned more
of artists, and perceived how uncommon it was ; but
she said to herself that if she were going to devote

306 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

herself to art, she would do it at first hand. She
was perfectly serene and happy in her final rejection
of Beaton ; he had worn out not only her fancy, but
her sympathy too.

This was what her mother would not believe when
Alma reported the interview to her ; she would not
believe it was the last time they should meet ; death
itself can hardly convince us that it is the last time
of anything, of everything between ourselves and
the dead. " Well, Alma," she said, " I hope you '11
never regret what you Ve done."

" You may be sure I shall not regret it. If ever
I 'm low-spirited about anything, I '11 think of giving
Mr. Beaton his freedom, and that will cheer me up."

" And don't you expect to get married ? Do you
intend to be an old maid ? " demanded her mother,
in the bonds of the superstition women have so long
been under to the effect that every woman must
wish to get married, if for no other purpose than to
avoid being an old maid.

" Well, mamma," said Alma, " I intend being a
young one for a few years yet ; and then I '11 see.
If I meet the right person, ail well and good ; if not,
not. But I shall pick and chose, as a man does ; I
won't merely be picked and chosen."

" You can't help yourself ; you may be very glad
if you are picked and chosen."

" What nonsense, mamma ! A girl can get any
man she wants, if she goes about it the right way.
And when my ' fated fairy prince ' comes along, I
shall just simply make furious love to him, and grab

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 307

him. Of course, I shall make a decent pretence of
talking in my sleep. I believe it 's done that way,
more than half the time. The fated fairy prince
wouldn't see the princess in nine cases out of ten if
she didn't say something ; he would go mooning
along after the maids of honour."

Mrs. Leighton tried to look unspeakable horror ;
but she broke down and laughed. " Well, you are
a strange girl, Alma."

" I don't know about that. But one thing I do
know, mamma, and that is that Prince Beaton isn't
the F. F. P. for me. How strange you are, mamma !
Don't you think it would be perfectly disgusting to
accept a person you didn't care for, and let him go
on and love you and marry you ? It's sickening."

" Why, certainly, Alma. It 's only because I know
you did care for him once "

"And now I don't. And he didn't care for me
once, and now he does. And so we 're quits."

" If I could believe—

" You had better brace up and try, mamma ; for
as Mr. Fulkerson says, it 's as sure as guns. From
the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, he 's
loathsome to me ; and he keeps getting loathsomer.
Ugh ! Good night ! "

XVI.

" WELL, I guess she 's given him the grand bounce,
at last," said Fulkerson to March in one of their
moments of confidence at the office. " That 's Mad's
inference from appearances — and disappearances;
and some little hints from Ma Leigh ton."

"Well, I don't know that I have any criticisms
to offer," said March. " It may be bad for Beaton,
but it's a very good thing for Miss Leighton. Upon
the whole, I believe I congratulate her."

" Well, I don't know. I always kind of hoped it
would turn out the other way. You know I always
had a sneaking fondness for the fellow."

"Miss Leighton seems not to have had."

"It's a pity she hadn't. I tell you, March, it
ain't so easy for a girl to get married, here in the
East, that she can afford to despise any chance."

" Isn't that rather a low view of it 1 "

"It's a common-sense view. Beaton has the
making of a first-rate fellow in him. He 's the raw
material of a great artist and a good citizen. All
he wants is somebody to take him in hand and keep
him from makin' an ass of himself and kickin' over

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 309

the traces generally, and ridin' two or three horses
bareback at once."

" It seems a simple problem, though the metaphor:
is rather complicated," said March. " But talk to
Miss Leighton about it. / haven't given Beaton
the grand bounce."

He began to turn over the manuscripts on his
table, and Fulkerson went away. But March found
himself thinking of the matter from time to time
during the day, and he spoke to his wife about it
when he went home. She surprised him by taking
Fulkerson's view of it.

" Yes, it 's a pity she couldn't have made up her
mind to have him. It 's better for a woman to be
married."

" I thought Paul only went so far as to say it was
well. But what would become of Miss Leighton's
artistic career if she married 1 "

" Oh, her artistic career ! " said Mrs. March, with
matronly contempt of it.

" But look here ! " cried her husband. " Suppose
she doesn't like him ? "

"How can a girl of that age tell whether she
likes any one or not ? "

"It seems to me you were able to tell at that age,
Isabel. But let 's examine this thing. (This thing !
I believe Fulkerson is characterising my whole par-
lance, as well as your morals.) Why shouldn't we
rejoice as much at a non-marriage as a marriage ?
When we consider the enormous risks people take
in linking their lives together, after not half so

310 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

much thought as goes to an ordinary horse trade, I
think we ought to be glad whenever they don't do
it. I believe that this popular demand for the
matrimony of others comes from our novel-reading.
• We get to thinking that there is no other happiness
or good fortune in life except marriage ; and it 's
offered in fiction as the highest premium for virtue,
courage, beauty, learning, and saving human life.
We all know it isn't. We know that in reality
marriage is dog cheap, and anybody can have it
for the asking — if he keeps asking enough people.
By-and-by some fellow will wake up and see that a
first-class story can be written from the anti-marriage
point of view ; and he '11 begin with an engaged
couple, and devote his novel to disengaging them,
and rendering them separately happy ever after in
the cUnofiment. It will make his everlasting for-
tune."

" Why don't you write it, Basil 1 " she asked. "It 's
a delightful idea. You could do it splendidly."

He became fascinated with the notion. He de-
veloped it in detail ; but at the end he sighed and
said, "With this Every Other Week work on my
hands, of course I can't attempt a novel. But per-
haps I sha'n't have it long."

She was instantly anxious to know what he
meant, and the novel and Miss Leighton's affair
were both dropped out of their thoughts. " What
do you mean ? Has Mr. Fulkerson said anything
yet?"

" Not a word. He knows no more about it than

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 311

I do. Dryfoos hasn't spoken, and we 're both afraid
to ask him. Of course, I couldn't ask him."

" No."

" But it 's pretty uncomfortable, to be kept hang-
ing by the gills, so, as Fulkerson says."

" Yes, we don't know what to do."

March and Fulkerson said the same to each other;
and Fulkerson said that if the old man pulled out,
he did not know what would happen. He had no
capital to carry the thing on, and the very fact that
the old man had pulled out would damage it so that
it would be hard to get anybody else to put it. In
the meantime Fulkerson was running Conrad's
office-work, when he ought to be looking after the
outside interests of the thing ; and he could not see
the day when he could get married.

" I don't know which it 's worse for, March : you
or me. I don't know, under the circumstances,
whether it 's worse to have a family or to want to
^ave one. Of course — of course ! We can't hurry
the old man up. It wouldn't be decent, and it
would be dangerous. We got to wait."

He almost decided to draw upon Dryfoos. for some
money ; he did not need any, but he said may be the
demand would act as a hint upon him. One day,
about a week after Alma's final rejection of Beaton,
Dryfoos came into March's office. Fulkerson was out,
but the old man seemed not to have tried to see him.

He put his hat on the floor by his chair, after he
sat down, and looked at March a while with his old
eyes, which had the vitreous glitter of old eyes

312 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

stimulated to sleeplessness. Then he said abruptly,
" Mr. March, how would you like to take this thing
off my hands ? "

" I don't understand, exactly," March began ; but
of course he understood that Dryfoos was offering to
let him have Every Other Week, on some terms or
other, and his heart leaped with hope.

The old man knew he understood, and so he did
not explain. He said, "I am going to Europe, to
take my family there. The doctor thinks it might
do my wife some good ; and I ain't very well myself
and my girls both want to go ; and so we 're goin'.
If you want to take this thing off my hands, I reckon
I can let you have it in 'most any shape you say.
You're all settled here in New York, and I don't
suppose you want to break up, much, at your time
of life, and I 've been thinkin' whether you wouldn't
like to take the thing."

The word, which Dryfoos had now used three
times, made March at last think of Fulkerson ; he
had been filled too full of himself to think of any one
else till he had mastered the notion of such wonderful
good fortune as seemed about falling to him. But
now, he did think of Fulkerson, and with some
shame and confusion ; for he remembered how when
Dryfoos had last approached him there on the
business of his connection with Every Other Week, he
had been very haughty with him, and told him that
he did not know him in this connection. He blushed
to find how far his thoughts had now run without
jencountering this obstacle of etiquette.

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 313

" Have you spoken to Mr. Fulkerson 1 " he asked.

"No, I hain't. It ain't a question of manage-
ment. It 's a question of buying and selling. I offer
the thing to you first. I reckon Fulkerson couldn't
get on very well without you."

March saw the real difference in the two cases,
and he was glad to see it, because he could act more
decisively if not hampered by an obligation to con-
sistency. " I am gratified, of course, Mr. Dryfoos ;
extremely gratified ; and it 's no use pretending that
I shouldn't be happy beyond bounds to get posses-
sion of Every Other Week. But I don't feel quite
free to talk about it apart from Mr. Fulkerson."

" Oh, all right ! " said the old man, with quick
offence.

March hastened to say, " I feel bound to Mr. Ful-
kerson in every way. He got me to come here, and
I couldn't even seem to act without him."

He put it questioningly, and the old man an-
swered, "Yes, I can see that. When '11 he be in 1 I
can wait." But he looked impatient.

"Very soon, now," said March, looking at his
watch. " He was only to be gone a moment," and
while he went on to talk with Dryfoos, he wondered
why the old man should have come first to speak
with him, and whether it was from some obscure
wish to make him reparation for displeasures in the
past, or from a distrust or dislike of Fulkerson.
Whichever light he looked at it in, it was flattering.

"Do you think of going abroad soon ?" he asked.

"What? Yes— I don't know— I reckon. We
VOL. II.— 14

314 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

got our passage engaged. It's on one of them
French boats. We 're goin' to Paris."

"Oh! That will be interesting to the young
ladies."

"Yes. I reckon we're goin' for them. Tain't
likely my Avife and me would want to pull up stakes
at our age," said the old man sorrowfully.

" But you may find it do you good, Mr. Dryfoos,"
said March, with a kindness that was real, mixed as
it was with the selfish interest he now had in the
intended voyage.

" Well, may be, may be," sighed the old man ; and
he dropped his head forward. " It don't make a
great deal of difference what we do or we don't do,
for the few years left."

"I hope Mrs. Dryfoos is as well as usual," said
March, finding the ground delicate and difficult.

"MiddhV, middlin'," said the old man. "My
daughter Christine, she ain't very well."

"Oh," said March. It was quite impossible for
him to affect a more explicit interest in the fact.
He and Dryfoos sat silent for a few moments, and
he was vainly casting about in his thought for some-
thing else which would tide them over the interval
till Fulkerson came, when he heard his step on the
stairs.

" Hello, hello !" he said. " Meeting of the clans !"
It was always a meeting of the clans, with Fulker-
son, or a field day, or an extra session, or a regular
conclave, whenever he saw people of any common
interest together. " Hain't seen you here for a good

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 315

while, Mr. Dryfoos. Did think some of running
away with Every Other Week one while, but couldn't
seem to work March up to the point."

He gave Dryfoos his hand, and pushed aside the
papers on the corner of March's desk, and sat down
there, and went on briskly with the nonsense he
could always talk, while he was waiting for another
to develop any matter of business ; he told March
afterward that he scented business in the air as soon
as he came into the room where he and Dryfoos
were sitting.

Dryfoos seemed determined to leave the word to
March, who said, after an inquiring look at him,
"Mr. Dryfoos has been proposing to let us have
Every Other Week, Fulkerson."

" Well, that 's good ; that suits yours truly ; March
& Fulkerson, publishers and proprietors, won't pre-
tend it don't, if the. terms are all right."

" The terms," said the old man, " are whatever
you want 'em. I haven't got any more use for the

concern •" He gulped, and stopped ; they knew

what he was thinking of, and they looked down in
pity. He went on. " I woon't put any more money
in it ; but what I 've put in a'ready, can stay ; and
you can pay me four per cent."

He got upon his feet ; and March and Fulkerson
stood, too.

" Well, I call that pretty white," said Fulkerson.
" It 's a bargain as far as I 'm concerned. I suppose
you '11 want to talk it over with your wife, March ? "

" Yes ; I shall," said March. " I can see that it's

316 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

a great chance ; but I want to talk it over with my
wife."

" Well, that 's right," said the old man. " Let me
hear from you to-morrow."

He went out, and Fulkerson began to dance round
the room. He caught March about his stalwart girth
and tried to make him waltz ; the office-boy came to
the door, and looked on with approval.

" Come, come, you idiot ! " said March, rooting
himself to the carpet.

" It 's just throwing the thing into our mouths,"
said Fulkerson. " The wedding will be this day
week. No cards ! Teedle-lumpty diddle ! Teedle-
lumpty-dee ! What do you suppose he means by it,
March ? " he asked, bringing himself soberly up, of a
sudden. " What is his little game ? Or is he crazy ?
It don't seem like the Dryfoos of my previous
acquaintance."

" I suppose," March suggested, " that he 's got
money enough, so that he don't care for this "

" Pshaw ! You 're a poet ! Don't you know that
the more money that kind of man has got, the more
he cares for money 1 It 's some fancy of his — like

having Lindau's funeral at his house By jings,

March, I believe you 're his fancy ! "

" Oh, now ! Don't you be a poet, Fulkerson ! "

" I do ! He seemed to take a kind of shine to you
from the day you wouldn't turn off old Lindau ; he
did indeed. It kind of shook him up. It made him
think you had something in you. He was deceived
by appearances. Look here ! I 'm going round to

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 317

see Mrs. March with you, and explain the thing to
her. I know Mrs. March ! She wouldn't believe
you knew what you were going in for. She has a
great respect for your mind, but she don't think
you 've got any sense. Heigh 1 "

" All right," said March, glad of the notion ; and
it was really a comfort to have Fulkerson with him
to develop all the points ; and it was delightful to
see how clearly and quickly she seized them ; it
made March proud of her. She was only angry
that they had lost any time in coming to submit
so plain a case to her. Mr. Dryfoos might change
his mind in the night, and then everything would
be lost. They must go to him instantly, and tell
him that they accepted ; they must telegraph him.

"Might as well send a district messenger; he'd
get there next week," said Fulkerson. " No, no !
It'll all keep till to-morrow, and be the better for
it. If he 's got this fancy for March, as I say, he
ain't agoing to change it in a single night. People
don't change their fancies for March in a lifetime.
Heigh ? "

When Fulkerson turned up very early at the
office next morning, as March did, he was less
strenuous about Dryfoos's fancy for March. It was
as if Miss Woodburn might have blown cold upon
that theory, as something unjust to his own merit,
for which she would naturally be more jealous than
he.

March told him, what he had forgotten to tell
him the day before, though he had been trying, all

318 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

through their excited talk, to get it in, that the
Dryfooses were going abroad.

" Oh, ho ! " cried Fulkerson. " That 's the milk in
the cocoanut, is it ? Well, I thought there must be
something."

But this fact had not changed Mrs. March at all
in her conviction that it was Mr. Dryfoos's fancy
for her husband which had moved him to make him
this extraordinary offer, and she reminded him that
it had first been made to him, without regard to
Fulkerson. "And perhaps," she went on, "Mr.
Dryfoos has been changed — softened ; and doesn't
find money all in all any more. He 's had enough
to change him, poor old man ! "

" Does anything from without change us 1 " her
husband mused aloud. " We 're brought up to
think so by the novelists, who really have the
charge of people's thinking, nowadays. But I
doubt it, especially if the thing outside is some
great event, something cataclysmal, like this tre-
mendous sorrow of Dryfoos's."

"Then what is it that changes us? " demanded his
wife, almost angry with him for his heresy.

"Well, it won't do to say, the Holy Spirit in-
dwelling. That would sound like cant at this day.
But the old fellows that used to say that had some
glimpses of the truth. They knew that it is the
still, small voice that the soul heeds, not the
deafening blasts of doom. I suppose I should have
to say that we didn't change at all. We develop.
There 's the making of several characters in each of

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 319

us ; we are each several characters, and sometimes
this character has the lead in us, and sometimes
that. From what Fulkerson has told me of Dry-
foos I should say he had always had the potentiality
of better things in him than he has ever been yet ;
and perhaps the time has come for the good to
have its chance. The growth in one direction has
stopped ; it 's begun in another ; that 's all. The
man hasn't been changed by his son's death ; it
stunned, it benumbed him ; but it couldn't change
him. It was an event, like any other, and it had
to happen as much as his being born. It was fore-
cast from the beginning of time, and was as en-
tirely an effect of his coming into the world "

" Basil ! Basil I " cried his wife. " This is fatal-
ism ! "

" Then you think," he said, " that a sparrow falls
to the ground without the will of God ? " and he
laughed provokingly. But he went on more soberly.
" I don't know what it all means, Isabel, though I
believe it means good. What did Christ himself
say ? That if one rose from the dead it would not
avail. And yet we are always looking for the mira-
culous ! I believe that unhappy old man truly grieves
for his son, whom he treated cruelly without the final
intention of cruelty, for he loved him and wished to
be proud of him ; but I don't think his death has
changed him, any more than the smallest event in
the chain of events remotely working through his
nature from the beginning. But why do you think
he 's changed at all 1 Because he offers to sell me
2U

320 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

Every Other Week on easy terms ? He says himself
that he has no further use for the thing; and he
knows perfectly well that he couldn't get his money
out of it now, without an enormous shrinkage. He
couldn't appear at this late day as the owner, and
sell it to anybody but Fulkerson and me for a fifth
of what it's cost him. He can sell it to us for all
it 's cost him ; and four per cent, is no bad interest
on his money till we can pay it back. It 's a good
thing for us ; but we have to ask whether Dryfoos
has done us the good, or whether it 's the blessing
of Heaven. If it 's merely the blessing of Heaven, I
don't propose being grateful for it."

March laughed again, and his wife said, " It 's
disgusting."

" It 's business," he assented. " Business is busi-
ness; but I don't say it isn't disgusting. Lindau
had a low opinion of it."

" I think that with all his faults Mr. Dryfoos is a
better man than Lindau," she proclaimed.

" Well, he 's certainly able to offer us a better
thing in Every Other Week," said March.

She knew he was enamoured of the literary finish
of his cynicism, and that at heart he was as humbly
and truly grateful as she was for the good fortune
opening to them.

XVII.

BEATON was at his best when he parted for the
last time with Alma Leighton, for he saw then that
what had happened to him was the necessary conse-
quence of what he had been, if not what he had
done. Afterward he lost this clear vision ; he began
to deny the fact ; he drew upon his knowledge of
life, and in arguing himself into a different frame of
mind he alleged the case of different people who had
done and been much worse things than he, and yet
no such disagreeable consequence had befallen them.
Then he saw that it was all the work of blind chance,
and he said to himself that it was this that made him
desperate, and willing to call evil his good, and to
take his own wherever he could find it. There was a
great deal that was literary and factitious and tawdry
in the mood in which he went to see Christine Dry-
foos, the night when the Marches sat talking their
prospects over ; and nothing that was decided in his
purpose. He knew what the drift of his mind was,
but he had always preferred to let chance determine
his events, and now since chance had played him
such an ill turn with Alma, he left it the whole re-
sponsibility. Not in terms, but in effect, this was
14*

322 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

his thought as he walked on uptown to pay the first
of the visits which Dryfoos had practically invited
him to resume. He had an insolent satisfaction in
having delayed it so long ; if he was going back he
was going back on his own conditions, and. these
were to be as hard and humiliating as he could make
them. But this intention again was inchoate, float-
ing, the stuff of an intention, rather than intention ;
an expression of temperament chiefly.

He had been expected before that. Christine had
got out of Mela that her father had been at Beaton's
studio, and then she had gone at the old man and
got from him every smallest fact of the interview
there. She had flung back in his teeth the good-will
toward herself with which he had gone to Beaton.
She was furious with shame and resentment ; she
told him he had made bad worse, that he had made
a fool of himself to no end ; she spared neither his
age, nor his grief-broken spirit, in which his will
could not rise against hers. She filled the house
with her rage, screaming it out upon him ; but when
her fury was once spent, she began to have some
hopes from what her father had done. She no
longer kept her bed; every evening she dressed
herself in the dress Beaton admired the most, and
sat up till a certain hour to receive him. She had
fixed a day in her own mind before which, if he
came, she would forgive him all he had made her
suffer : the mortification, the suspense, the despair.
Beyond this, she had the purpose of making her
father go to Europe ; she felt that she could no

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 323

longer live in America, with the double disgrace
that had been put upon her.

Beaton rang, and while the servant was coming
the insolent caprice seized him to ask for the young
ladies instead of the old man, as he had supposed
of course he should do. The maid who answered
the bell, in the place of the reluctant Irishman of
other days, had all his hesitation in admitting that
the young ladies were at home.

He found Mela in the drawing-room. At sight of
him she looked scared ; but she seemed to be reas-
sured by his calm. He asked if he was not to have
the pleasure of seeing Miss Dryfoos too ; and Mela
said she reckoned the girl had gone upstairs to tell
her. Mela was in black, and Beaton noted how well
the solid sable became her rich, red blond beauty ;
he wondered what the effect would be with Christine.

But she, when she appeared, was not in mourning.
He fancied that she wore the lustrous black silk,
with the breadths of white Venetian lace about the
neck which he had praised, because he praised it.
Her cheeks burned with a Jacqueminot crimson,
what should be white in her face was chalky white.
She carried a plumed ostrich fan, black and soft,
and after giving him her hand, sat down and waved
it to and fro slowly, as he remembered her doing
the night they first met. She had no ideas, except
such as related intimately to herself, and she had no
gabble, like Mela ; and she let him talk. It was
past the day when she had promised herself she
would forgive him ; but as he talked on she felt all

324 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

her passion for him revived, and the conflict of desires,
the desire to hate, the desire to love, made a dizzying
whirl in her brain. She looked at him, half doubting
whether he was really there or not. He had never
looked so handsome, with his dreamy eyes floating
under his heavy overhanging hair, and his pointed
brown beard defined against his lustrous shirt-front.
His mellowly modulated, mysterious voice lulled her;
when Mela made an errand out of the room, and
Beaton crossed to her and sat down by her she
shivered.

" Are you cold ? " he asked, and she felt the cruel
mockery and exultant consciousness of power in his
tone, as perhaps a wild thing feels captivity in the
voice of its keeper. But now, she said she would
still forgive him if he asked her.

Mela came back, and the talk fell again to the
former level ; but Beaton had not said anything
that really meant what she wished, and she saw that
he intended to say nothing. Her heart began to
burn like a fire in her breast.

"You been tellun' him about our goun' to
Europe ? " Mela asked.

"No," said Christine briefly, and looking at the
fan spread out on her lap.

Beaton asked when ; and then he rose, and said
if it was so soon, he supposed he should not see
them again, unless he saw them in Paris j he might
very likely run over, during the summer. He said
to himself that he had given it a fair trial with
Christine, and he could not make it go.

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 325

Christine rose, with a kind of gasp, and mechani-
cally followed him to the door of the drawing-room ;
Mela came too; and while he was putting on his
overcoat, she gurgled and bubbled in good-humour
with all the world. Christine stood looking at him,
and thinking how handsomer still he was in his over-
coat ; and that fire burned fiercer in her. She felt
him more than life to her and knew him lost, and
the frenzy that makes a woman kill the man she
loves, or fling vitriol to destroy the beauty she can-
not have for all hers, possessed her lawless soul.
He gave his hand to Mela, and said, in his wind-
harp stop, " Good-bye."

As he put out his hand to Christine, she pushed
it aside with a scream of rage ; she flashed at him,
and with both hands made a feline pass at the face
he bent toward her. He sprang back,, and after an
instant of stupefaction he pulled open the door be-
hind him, and ran out into the street.

" Well, Christine Dryfoos ! " said Mela. " Spag
at him like a wild-cat ! "

" I don't care," Christine shrieked. " I '11 tear his
eyes out ! " She flew upstairs to her own room, and
left the burden of the explanation to Mela, who did
it justice.

Beaton found himself, he did not know how, in
his studio, reeking with perspiration and breathless.
He must almost have run. He struck a match with
a shaking hand, and looked at his face in the glass.
He expected to see the bleeding marks of her nails
on his cheeks, but he could see nothing. He

326 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

grovelled inwardly ; it was all so low and coarse and
vulgar ; it was all so just and apt to his deserts.

There was a pistol among the dusty bric-a-brac on
the mantel which he had kept loaded to fire at a cat
in the area. He took it and sat looking into the
muzzle, wishing it might go off by accident and kill
him. It slipped through his hand and struck the
floor, and there was a report; he sprang into the
air, feeling that he had been shot. But he found
himself still alive, with only a burning line along his
cheek, such as one of Christine's finger-nails might
have left.

He laughed with cynical recognition of the fact
that he had got his punishment in the right way, and
that his case was not to be dignified into tragedy.

XVIII.

THE Marches, with Fulkerson, went to see the
Dryfooses off on the French steamer. There was
no longer any business obligation on them to be
civil, and there was greater kindness for that reason
in the attention they offered. Every Other Week had
been made over to the joint ownership of March
and Fulkerson, and the details arranged with a
hardness on Dryfoos's side which certainly left Mrs.
March with a sense of his incomplete regeneration.
Yet when she saw him there on the steamer, she
pitied him ; he looked wearied and bewildered ;
even his wife, with her twitching head, and her
prophecies of evil, croaked hoarsely out, while she
clung to Mrs. March's hand where they sat together
till the leave-takers were ordered ashore, was less
pathetic. Mela was looking after both of them, and
trying to cheer them, in a joyful excitement. " I
tell 'em it's goun' to add ten years to both their
lives," she said. "The voyage '11 do their healths
good ; and then, we 're gittun' away from that
miser'ble pack o' servants that was eatun' us up,
there in New York. I hate the place ! " she said,
as if they had already left it. " Yes, Mrs. Mandel 's

328 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

goun', too," she added, following the direction of
Mrs. March's eyes where they noted Mrs. Mandel
speaking to Christine on the other side of the cabin.
" Her and Christine had a kind of a spat, and she
was goun' to leave, hut here only the other day,
Christine offered to make it up with her, and now
they're as thick as thieves. Well, I reckon we
couldn't very well 'a' got along without her. She 's
about the only one that speaks French in this family."

Mrs. March's eyes still dwelt upon Christine's
face ; it was full of a furtive wildness. She seemed
to be keeping a watch to prevent herself from look-
ing as if she were looking for some one. " Do you
know," Mrs. March said to her husband as they
jingled along homeward in the Christopher Street
T^ob-tail car, " I thought she was in love with that de-
testable Mr. Beaton of yours at one time ; and that
he was amusing himself with her."

" I can bear a good deal, Isabel," said March, " but
I wish you wouldn't attribute Beaton to me. He 's
the invention of that Mr. Fulkerson of yours."

" Well, at any rate, I hope, now, you '11 both get
rid of him, in the reforms you 're going to carry out."

These reforms were for a greater economy in the
management of Every Other Week ; but in their very
nature they could not include the suppression of
Beaton. He had always shown himself capable
and loyal to the interests of the magazine, and both
the new owners were glad to keep him. He was
glad to stay, though he made a gruff pretence of
indifference, when they came to look over the new

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 329

arrangement with him. In his heart he knew that
he was a fraud ; but at least he could say to himself
with truth that he had not now the shame of taking
Dryfoos's money.

March and Fulkerson retrenched at several points
where it had seemed indispensable to spend, as long
as they were not spending their own : that was only
human. Fulkerson absorbed Conrad's department
into his, and March found that he could dispense
with Kendricks in the place of assistant which he
had lately filled since Fulkerson had decided that
March was overworked. They reduced the number
of illustrated articles, and they systematised the pay-
ment of contributors strictly according to the sales
of each number, on their original plan of co-opera-
tion : they had got to paying rather lavishly for
material without reference to the sales.

Fulkerson took a little time to get married, and
went on his wedding journey out to Niagara, and
down the St. Lawrence to Quebec over the line of
travel that the Marches had taken in their wedding
journey. He had the pleasure of going from Mon-
treal to Quebec on the same boat on which he first
met March.

They have continued very good friends, and their
wives are almost without the rivalry that usually
embitters the wives of partners. At first Mrs.
March did not like Mrs. Fulkerson's speaking of
her husband as the Ownah, and March as the
Edito'j but it appeared that this was only a con-
venient method of recognising the predominant

330 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

quality in each, and was meant neither to affirm
nor to deny anything. Colonel Woodburn offered
as his contribution to the celebration of the co-
partnership, which Fulkerson could not be pre-
vented from dedicating with a little dinner, the
story of Fulkerson's magnanimous behaviour in
regard to Dryfoos at that crucial moment when it
was a question whether he should give up Dryfoos
or give up March. Fulkerson winced at it ; but
Mrs. March told her husband that now, whatever
happened, she should never have any misgivings of
Fulkerson again ; and she asked him if he did not
think he ought to apologise to him for the doubts
with which he had once inspired her. March said
that he did not think so.

The Fulkersons spent the summer at a seaside
hotel in easy reach of the city ; but they returned
early to Mrs. Leighton's, with whom they are to
board till spring, when they are going to fit up Ful-
kerson's bachelor apartment for housekeeping. Mrs.
March, with her Boston scruple, thinks it will be
odd, living over the Every Other Wed: offices; but
there will be a separate street entrance to the
apartment; and besides, in New York you may do
anything.

The future of the Leightons promises no imme-
diate change. Kendricks goes there a good deal to
see the Fulkersons, and Mrs. Fulkerson says he
comes to see Alma. He has seemed taken with her
ever since he first met her at Dryfoos's, the day of
Lindau's funeral, and though Fulkerson objects to

A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 331

dating a fancy of that kind from an occasion of that
kind, he justly argues with March that there can be
no harm in it, and that we are liable to be struck by
lightning any time. In the meanwhile there is no
proof that Alma returns Kenclricks' interest, if he
feels any. She has got a little bit of colour into the
fall exhibition ; but the fall exhibition is never so
good as the spring exhibition. Wetmore is rather
sorry she has succeeded in this, though he promoted
her success. He says her real hope is in black and
white, and it is a pity for her to lose sight of her
original aim of drawing for illustration. .

News has come from Paris of the engagement of
Christine Dryfoos. There the Dryfooses met with
the success denied them in New York ; many
American plutocrats must await their apotheosis in
Europe, where society has them, as it were, in a
translation. Shortly after their arrival they were
celebrated in the newspapers as the first millionaire
American family of natural-gas extraction who had
arrived in the capital of civilisation ; and at a French
watering-place Christine encountered her fate — a
nobleman full of present debts and of duels in the
past. Fulkerson says the old man can manage the
debtor, and Christine can look out for the duellist.
" They say those fellows generally whip their wives.
He 'd better not try it with Christine, I reckon, un-
less he 's practised with a panther."

One day, shortly after their return to town in the
autumn from the brief summer outing they permitted
themselves, the Marches met Margaret Vance. At

332 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.

first they did not know her in the dress of the sister-
hood which she wore; but she smiled joyfully,
almost gaily, on seeing them, and though she hurried
by with the sister who accompanied her, and did
not stay to speak, they felt that the peace that
passeth understanding had looked at them from her
eyes.

" Well, she is at rest, there can't be any doubt of
that," he said, as he glanced round at the drifting
black robe which folloAved her free, nun-like walk.

"Yes, now she can do all the good she likes,"
sighed his wife. " I wonder — I wonder if she ever
told his father about her talk with poor Conrad that
day he was shot ? "

"I don't know. I don't care. In any event it
would be right. She did nothing wrong. If she
unwittingly sent him to his death, she sent him to
die for God's sake, for man's sake."

"Yes— yes. But still "

" Well, we must trust that look of hers."

THE EKD.

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